


Touch the Stars with Your Fingertips

by predilection



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6752404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/predilection/pseuds/predilection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shelby, a mechanic on a transport, finds a strange crystal on a desert planet. The next thing she knows, she's building lightsabers, making new friends, and fighting the First Order.</p><p>A Dino Charge Star Wars AU in which the energems are a set of lightsaber crystals and the rangers are Jedi in all but name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Touch the Stars with Your Fingertips

**Author's Note:**

> Because at some point I decided that what the world needed was a Shelby-centric Dino Charge Star Wars AU.
> 
> This fic is set in The Force Awakens-era of Star Wars but should not contain any spoilers for the movie. This fic does contain spoilers for the end of the first season of Dino Charge though. 
> 
> I should probably note that this fic was envisioned as the first part of a longer story that I may never get around to writing. That being said, rest assured that this story should stand on its own just fine.
> 
> As both a Dino Charge and Star Wars fan, I had a lot of fun smushing these two universes together, and I hope you enjoy what I've come up with!
> 
> Warnings: This story contains physical violence, a reference to torture, and two instances of attempted mind control.

As a child, Shelby dreams of exploring the galaxy.

She wants her own ship someday, so she starts studying them -- the different classifications, engines types and controls -- and she even visits junkyards to look at old ship parts. Sometimes, when she's lucky, she gets to visit the local port and stares, wide eyed and excited, at ships in person. 

Through her love of ships, she discovers that she has a knack for understanding all things mechanical. She builds her first engine when she's seven years old and builds her first hyperdrive -- albeit an old model -- when she's fourteen. She spends most of her teenage years studying every ship schematic she can get her hands on, figuring out how they work.

This experience serves her well when she's eighteen and leaves home in search of a job.

An older human woman named Karone, the captain of a transport which bounces back and forth between ports in the Outer and Mid Rim, sees Shelby's potential and offers her a job as a mechanic. Shelby jumps at the opportunity, thrilled to finally be in space -- to finally be travelling to worlds she spent so long dreaming of.

*

To Shelby's delight, two months after she's hired, she's granted her first planet-side leave. She's given a full day of sunlight -- from dawn to dusk -- to explore a small desert world named Cera III. Cera III is hot and fairly desolate with only a few small settlements clustered around one main water source. Not even the locals think there's anything exciting about Cera III, but from the moment Shelby's boots touch the sand, she has a good feeling about the planet. 

She feels like something is calling out to her to explore, so she packs a bag of supplies and begins wandering through the settlements. It's not long until she finds herself at the edge of the furthest settlement from the port, staring out into a horizon of what seems like nothing but endless sand. Whatever is calling out to her tells her to keep going so she walks out into the desert. She only stops when she gets a strong sense that she should be digging.

The sand under her feet looks no different to her than any other sand around, but she kneels and plunges her fingers into it.

She lifts her hands and suddenly she knows she's holding something important. She lets the sand she's picked up slowly slip between her fingers, filtering out until all that's left in her cupped palms is a small pink crystal.

*

When she's back on the ship and in her quarters, she examines the crystal. It's uncut and plain, but when she holds it, it feels like it's vibrating, even though it doesn't actually seem to be vibrating when she looks at it. She can't explain it -- it's like the crystal is _humming_.

Mostly, she thinks it's pretty and likes the way it sparkles in the light so she grabs some silver wire to make a setting for it. If nothing else, she figures it will make a nice necklace -- a memento of her time on Cera III.

As she begins constructing her necklace, she's gripped by a feeling of something not being quite right -- she feels, strangely, like a potential is being wasted. She puts down her wire and her tools and considers the crystal again. "What do you want to be?" she asks it.

She touches it with her fingertips and the next thing she knows, she's somewhere else.

The building she's in is large with higher ceilings than she's ever seen. There are giant columns of stone that frame the walls of the building, and closer to the ceiling, there are windows that let in rays of a sun's light. 

Shelby cranes her neck upwards and turns on her heel to look around the building in awe. It's larger than entire spaceports she's travelled to, and somehow Shelby senses that this building is perhaps only a small part of a much larger structure. 

There are beings walking around the building, she notices, all wearing similar looking tunics and robes in earthy colors. They look like the robes of the Jedi of the Republic -- the ones she's seen in vintage wanted posters. Some of the beings are speaking to each other, others are sitting on the stone floor and reading, and others still simply seem to be on their way somewhere. They all look small and insignificant compared to the giant columns of stone that surround them.

Shelby reaches out with senses that she didn't know she had and gasps. She can _feel_ every being in the building with her. She can also _feel_ just how many beings are in the larger structure the building is part of. There are thousands of living entities here and sensing them all at once is almost overwhelming. 

Some part of her knows, suddenly, that even if this feels real, what she's experiencing isn't real -- that this is a vision of a different place and time.

She begins walking through the giant building she's in. Something tugs at her, directing her where to go, and she turns into a small doorway cut into the closest wall. The doorway leads to a hallway, and that hallway leads to stairwell. She passes many beings as she walks, but none of them pay any attention to her. 

She climbs down two flights of stairs and traverses another long hallway until she stops in front of a door. The door is twice her height and covered in ornate metal designs she hasn't seen on any other doors she has passed. The door also seems older, showing wear and rust. She pushes the door open -- it's surprisingly heavy -- and steps inside.

The room she enters is lit by thousands of small points of light on the walls. She steps closer to the lights and discovers that the walls are covered in tiny, glowing crystals, much like the one she found on Cera III.

She's drawn to a group of crystals on the far wall. There are ten of them grouped together in two rows of five. Most of the crystals in the room are bright blue or green, but these ten glow in many different colors. One of them is pink and is the exact shape and size as her crystal. She reaches towards it and then, abruptly, she's back in her quarters on her captain's ship, her fingertips brushing her pink crystal.

For a long time, she doesn't move. Never having experienced a vision before, she stares wide eyed at her crystal, feeling stunned and not a little confused.

*

When the ship docks in the Triforia space port, she takes advantage of the large market there to buy some replacement parts the ship needs. While she's at it, she also buys a power cell for herself. 

She's not sure why she buys the cell -- it's too small to be of much use on the ship -- and the only explanation she has is that it caught her eye. She's bought parts for the same reason before. She doesn't think much of it and places the power cell in a box of parts she keeps under her bed.

It isn't until three months later, when she's adding a short length of pipe to the same box, that she remembers that she put the strange crystal into the box too. She pulls out the crystal and then up-ends the box onto her desk and examines her collection of parts.

Using what she has, she builds a power field conductor for the power cell, and then connects it to a field energizer, a power adjuster and a magnetic stabilization ring. She builds a setting for the crystal out of wire -- not unlike the setting for the necklace she once wished to create -- and fits it between the conductor and field stabilizer. 

She drills a few holes into the pipe before she slides everything else into it. Then she almost drops her creation when she realizes what it is that she's built.

Without ever seeing one in person or even knowing how they're made, she's somehow constructed a lightsaber hilt.

Cautiously, she activates it. She almost jumps when a blade of light appears from the end of the hilt. The blade is white but it's tinted pink, and it hums like her crystal does only much louder.

She deactivates the blade and, taking a deep breath, tries not to panic. She's not sure how she could build such a thing. After all, the only beings who create lightsabers are the Jedi and the Jedi have been dead for over fifty years.

*

She comes to terms with the fact that she must be force sensitive a month later when she can tell that a group of people they're transporting to Mirinoi are on the run from the First Order without them giving any outward signs of it.

She can feel their fear like it's a palatable thing, but it's that she can feel _what_ it is they fear without them saying so much as a word that terrifies her.

It's not the first time she's felt something like this -- she's randomly felt things, mostly strong, negative emotions like fear and anger, from others for a long time -- but this is the first time she's sure of what she is.

It's soon after they leave Mirinoi that it hits her that she should be afraid too. The First Order, like the Empire before it, hunts force sensitives, and the First Order has eyes everywhere.

*

Over the next few months, she reads every piece of information she can download on the Jedi and the Sith. She also does her best to keep her head down with one exception.

She keeps her lightsaber in her toolkit along with her other tools. She knows carrying it around with her probably increases the potential danger she's in for she knows she'll be questioned if it's discovered, but having her lightsaber with her makes her feel safer and more at peace than when she leaves it in her quarters.

*

Eight months after Shelby finds the crystal, she discovers someone in one of the ship's maintenance corridors sitting with their back to a bulkhead. On closer inspection, the being turns out to be a young human man, wearing a simple tan-colored tunic as well as black pants and boots. His hair is dark and wavy, and it falls over his forehead and over the tops of his ears. 

What catches her attention isn't his looks or that he's not where he's supposed to be, it's that he's writing in a bound paper book.

"Is that paper?" she asks, shocked. She's only seen paper once before and it was in the market on Grove A.

He jumps in surprise -- she figures he thought he was alone -- and blinks up at her. He seems to take in her overalls, her jacket and the toolkit on her belt, and some of the tension seems to ease from his shoulders. "Yeah," he replies.

"And you're _writing_ on it?" she can't help but exclaim. He laughs and it makes his face light up. Now that she's paying attention to his features, she can't help but notice that he's actually quite pretty. 

"Why else would you carry around paper?" he asks, but then his smile turns sad. He closes the book and runs a finger down its spine. "This journal belonged to my father," he says.

"Oh," she says, frowning at the way he used the past tense. She's not sure what to say to that.

He shakes his head. "He's missing not dead. That's why I'm heading to the Outer Rim. I'm trying to find him." He seems to study her expression for a moment and then offers her his hand. "I'm Tyler," he says.

She hesitates. Normally passengers on the transport aren't this friendly or this free with information, but she takes a step forward and puts her hand in his. "I'm Shelby," she says. 

"I don't know why I just told you all that," he admits and shrugs. "It's strange but I feel like I can trust you."

Now that he's said it, she realizes she can feel something too -- a sense of calmness emanating from him. She wonders if he, too, is force sensitive. She's never met another one before. She doesn't say anything though. Instead, she offers him a small smile before getting back to work and taking apart a nearby panel.

She doesn't tell him to go back to the passenger areas of the ship.

*

The next port they stop in is on Gratha and it's filled with stormtroopers and officers from the First Order. Shelby's heart begins to beat double-time and she thinks of twenty places to hide her lightsaber in the bowels of the ship before Captain Karone puts a hand on her shoulder and says, "Relax."

She never asks Shelby why she's worried and Shelby loves her for it.

Despite not liking the First Order very much, her captain has somehow managed to stay on their good side so their ship isn't searched. They search everyone who leaves it though.

Shelby watches from the window in her quarters as Tyler, who she recognizes despite the long brown cloak he's hidden himself under, walks down the boarding ramp. She's worried he'll be caught. For what, she's not sure.

Two stormtroopers pat Tyler down at the bottom of the ramp, and they make him remove the cloak, boots, and jacket he's wearing. Strangely they tug at the neckline of his tunic and also make him lift up his sleeves to reveal his forearms.

As this is going on, another set of stormtroopers goes through his bag. She sees a stormtrooper pull out what looks like pieces of metal from it, examine them with a scanner and then shove them back in.

In the end, Tyler passes through their scrutiny without any trouble and Shelby exhales, relieved.

*

Later that same day, Shelby's on shift when she passes through the corridor where she met Tyler. There's something resting on the ground where he was sitting and, curious, Shelby bends down and picks it up.

It's a folded sheet of paper she guesses was ripped from the journal. She's floored by the fact that she's holding paper with her own two hands until she sees that there's something written on it. In Basic and in what she assumes is Tyler's handwriting, it says: _It was nice meeting you, Shelby. If it's not too much trouble, can you keep this safe for me? It belonged to my father. I'll come back for it soon._

Carefully, Shelby unfolds the sheet of paper. Inside, she finds a black leather bracelet with a silver charm. At the center of the charm is a red stone that she immediately recognizes as a lightsaber crystal.

*

Shelby takes the bracelet back to her quarters folded in Tyler's note. Without touching it, she puts in on her desk and stares at it.

What reading material she's been able to find on lightsaber crystals have all said the same thing: that red crystals are only used in lightsabers belonging to the Sith. She's also read that red crystals are extremely powerful and full of dark energy. One report even said that Jedi and other force sensitives had the ability sense the darkness in red crystals even at a distance.

Shelby frowns. She definitely doesn't sense anything bad from Tyler's crystal. If anything, it feels a lot like hers. Its hum is different though -- it's a little higher pitched.

She's not sure why Tyler has such a thing and her mind whirls with questions: How did he know to leave it with her of all people? Was the First Order looking for him? Was that why they were on Gratha when Tyler departed the ship?

She lets out a frustrated breath, hoping she'll get answers to her questions soon.

*

The first time she touches Tyler's crystal with her bare hands, she finds herself in what looks like a base in some sort of cave. The floor, walls and ceiling of the large room she's in look like they've been dug out of brown stone. There's a set of computers arranged in a circle in the center of the room, shelves by the far wall, and a few workbenches covered with tools scattered about. 

There's also what looks like a medical table with three beings standing around it. Shelby knows that this has to be another vision and steps towards them. 

One of the three beings looks to be from a reptilian species she's never seen before and is dressed in a crimson-colored cloak. 

The other two beings appear to be a female Chalactan and a male Zabrak. The Chalactan has long blond hair which she has braided so it rests only on her right shoulder, and she's wearing tan Jedi robes under a purple cloak. The Zabrak's skin is two different shades of grey, separated by symmetrical lines that bring out his sharp features. He also has six small horns on his forehead -- the two largest set into his hairline. His robes and cloak are like the Chalactan's except they're both black.

On the medical table in front of them is a slab of carbonite, and to Shelby's horror, it looks as if there's a person frozen inside of it.

The Zabrak asks, "Are you sure he's still alive?"

The Chalactan shakes her head. "Don't ask me how it's possible but he is. Somehow he's been kept in stasis since long before the Great Sith War."

"Can you wake him, Kendall?" the reptilian being asks.

"I'm going to try," the Chalactan -- Kendall -- replies. She places what looks like a stabilizer on the side of the carbonite slab and begins entering a sequence of codes into the slab's ancient-looking control panel.

A set of lights over the control panel begin blinking and Kendall, the Zabrak and the repilitian being step back. As they do so, Kendall and the Zabrak take off their cloaks, throwing them over a nearby workbench. Shelby immediately notices that there are lightsaber hilts attached to both of their belts.

As the carbonite begins to thaw, it melts into a viscous substance that drips off the table and onto the cave floor. The more it melts, the more it reveals the body of what seems to be a human male. He's soaking wet with carbonite slime and his long black hair sticks to his cheeks with it. Shelby has no idea who he is, but he's wearing dark blue Jedi robes made of materials so rich that they would probably cost a month of her salary. 

The man wakes, blinking his eyes open and groaning, and when he tries to sit up, Kendall and the Zabrak step forward again. The Zabrak supports the man by putting an arm around his back, the carbonite slime getting all over his robes in the process. "Careful, mate. You've been asleep for a long time," the Zabrak says.

"Tagu? Where Tagu?" the man asks.

The Zabrak exchanges a look with Kendall. Kendall shakes her head. 

"I'm Chase," the Zabrak -- Chase -- says.

"I'm Kendall," Kendall says. The human turns in her direction and rubs at his eyes. "You won't be able to see for a while," Kendall tells him, running a scanner over his body. "You also might feel dizzy. They're side effects of the carbonite freezing, but they should pass in a few hours."

The man frowns. "Koda," he says. "My name. Koda." He reaches under his robes and pulls out a necklace. At the end of a black cord is a gold pendant with a blue lightsaber crystal in its center. He makes a fist around it, squeezing it tight.

Shelby blinks and she's back in her quarters again. She hastily pulls her fingers away from Tyler's crystal, stumbles backwards, and sits on the edge of her bed. Her hands are shaking when she reaches for her own lightsaber. She holds it, feeling the hum of her crystal and letting it comfort her.

She knows now, without a doubt, that her crystal and Tyler's are related. She'd also bet good money that the beings in her vision -- Kendall, Chase and Koda -- have similar crystals.

She can tell that this information is important -- she wouldn't be having visions from the force otherwise. What she doesn't know is what to do with this information.

*

She meets Tyler again two months later when someone knocks on the door to her quarters. She expects it to be her captain or someone else on their crew as they're the only people who visit her, so she's surprised when she sees that it's Tyler standing at her doorstep. It's even more surprising given that ship is in light-speed and she didn't even know he was on board.

She blinks up at him, startled. He's wearing his brown cloak and his face is almost entirely hidden by his hood. Then she remembers herself and hastily steps aside to let him in to her quarters.

Once the door has slid closed behind him, he pulls down his hood and smiles at her. "Hello, Shelby," he says.

"Hey," she replies, smiling back. She barely knows him, but she's happy to see him again. "Welcome back."

She offers him a seat at her desk. As he takes it, she notices that his hand comes down heavy on the back of her chair like he's using it for support. Once he's seated, he winces and it's then that she senses his pain.

"You're hurt." 

He shakes his head. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing," she says, knowing that it has to be serious if she can sense it. 

He hesitates, but then pushes his cloak away from his body. There's blood soaking through the tunic he's wearing underneath. She curses, and as she runs to her 'fresher to grab her med kit, he says, "It's not as bad as it looks."

"Well, that's good because it looks terrible," she tells him, getting down on her knees at his side and opening the med kit.

He shrugs off his cloak but he seems to struggle with removing his shirt, grimacing when he tries to pull it off. She stops him with a hand on his shoulder, and gets him to raise his arms as much as he comfortably can. Gently, she tugs his shirt over his head. 

Once it's off, she immediately sees the source of the bleeding. He has a wound down the left side of his torso that looks like a burn, not blaster fire. The edges of it are bleeding, but the center of it isn't at all because it's been cauterized. It's like he was struck by a--

"It's a lightsaber burn," she breathes.

He raises his eyes from his wound to look at her. "Yeah," he says.

"First Order?" she asks, frightened for him.

He nods, frowning. "First Order," he agrees.

She cleans his burn the best she can. Afterward, she applies a disinfectant paste and healing balm to it before she wraps it in clean bandages. When she's done, she notices that he's looking at her and that there's warmth in his eyes. "Thank you," he tells her.

"It's nothing," she says. 

Silence settles around them and she doesn't know what to say. She remembers that she doesn't really know Tyler. All she knows about him is his name, that he has a crystal like hers, and that he's clearly on the run from the First Order.

"Before I forget," she says, sliding the box of parts out from under her bed. She lifts an old A25 converter from the box, opens a hidden compartment on the converter's side, and fishes out his bracelet. "I should return this to you," she says as she hands it to him.

He closes his fingers around it. "Thank you. Again," he says, smiling. "I knew I could trust you."

"I figured you had a good reason for giving it to me and that that reason had to do with why the First Order was combing the port on Gratha."

He sighs. "About that..."

"You don't have to tell me," she says quickly and then admits, "Though I'm really, _really_ curious."

Her words seems to shock a laugh out of him, but laughing seems to pull at his burn because he winces again. "I should probably get back to my quarters," he says.

She wants to ask him a hundred questions, but instead she asks him what she thinks is the most important one: "Are you going to be okay?"

"I'll be fine," he says. She's not sure she believes him but she helps him back into his shirt -- he says he'll be alright changing into another one later -- and into his cloak, and helps him get back onto his feet.

It isn't until he reaches her door that she calls out, "Wait."

He turns.

"Uh, we don't reach the port on Tatooine for three days. My shift ends at 1900 tomorrow. Do you want to... maybe meet up afterwards? Here, if you want?"

"I'd love to," he says and smiles yet again. He seems to like to smile, she thinks. She's glad. Smiles look good on him. 

*

When Tyler come to her door the next evening, he looks better and is moving easier than he did the day before. He's also carrying his bag over his shoulder. After she's lets him in, he opens it and pulls out one of the pieces of metal she saw stormtroopers examine and disregard back on Gratha.

"It's a power cell," Tyler explains, handing it to her. "I don't think it's working though. I was wondering if you could try fixing it."

"Is it drained?" she asks, turning the power cell over in her hands. It's older and bulkier than the ones she's used to. It looks like something that might've powered a droid a hundred years ago.

"I have no idea," Tyler admits.

"Where did you get it?" Shelby asks.

Tyler's silent for a moment, and it seems like he's considering something before he replies, "I guess it won't hurt to show you." He pulls out more parts from his bag and puts them down on her desk. "My father built something with all of these parts, but he took it apart so the First Order wouldn't get their hands on it or even realize what it was. Now I can't get it back together again and the broken power cell isn't making it any easier for me."

"Okay," she says, a little confused, and suppresses her urge to ask what these parts created when they were combined. "I'll see what I can do with this power cell."

Tyler ends up sitting on the tiny couch she has tucked in the corner of her quarters writing in his journal while she pokes and prods at the power cell. It takes her longer than she thinks it should for her to realize that one of its couplings is missing and once she builds it a new one, it seems to work fine. 

She's about to tell Tyler the good news, when she notices that one of the parts he placed on her desk looks like a field energizer, albeit an ancient one. On closer inspection, another one of the parts seems to be a magnetic stabilization ring, though she's never seen one quite like it before. 

She exhales, surprised. They're parts for a lightsaber.

What Tyler said about his father trying to keep the First Order from this creation makes more sense now.

She begins to fit the pieces together, and as she does so, it becomes clear to her that this lightsaber was created by someone who knew what they were doing when they created it. The design is more complex than her own but once she figures out how the pieces are supposed to attach to one another, they slide together easily. 

The only piece that appears to be missing is a crystal setting, so she makes one out of the same silver wire she used for her own setting. Once it's installed, she thinks she's done. She picks up the mostly-completed lightsaber hilt -- it's still missing a crystal -- and takes it over to Tyler.

He looks up from his journal when he hears her approach and his eyes go wide when she offers him the hilt. Then he scrambles backwards on the couch, and she sees both the surprise and fear in his eyes. She feels his fear too, coming from him in waves. 

"How did you do that?" he asks, sounding suspicious, and she notices that one of his hands starts moving towards his bag. She wouldn't be surprised if he had a weapon in there.

She puts his hilt down on the couch next to him, and then, keeping her hands where he could see them at all times, walks back over to her toolkit and pulls out her own lightsaber hilt. It's the first time she's ever showed it to anyone, and she feels a rush of anticipation when she holds it up and replies, "Because I've built one before."

Tyler's eyes seem to get even wider, but he sits up straight and edges closer to her, the fear coming from him fading. "You built a lightsaber?" he asks and sounds stunned.

"I did," she admits. "A few months ago, I found a crystal like yours, and then I built this hilt for it."

"Can you turn it on?" he asks, sounding cautious. "I'd like to see your blade."

She's not sure why he's asking this of her, but she activates her lightsaber and her pinkish blade glows brightly in the dim light of her quarters. She deactivates it after a few seconds, and the moment she does, Tyler slumps, like all the tension in his body has been drained at once. 

"White and pink," he says, so quietly that she barely hears him.

"Tyler?" she asks.

He doesn't say anything, but a moment later he reaches for the hilt she built out of his father's parts. His hands are shaking when he lifts it up and examines it from all angles. 

When he's finished his visual inspection, he rests it on his lap, looks at her, and says, "My dad told me that these crystals only resonate with certain people. Only they can activate a blade using them."

He pulls down the cuff of his shirt sleeve, revealing his bracelet. He fiddles with it, and then holds up his red crystal between his thumb and forefinger.

She watches him as he easily opens the hilt she put together for him, and places the crystal into its new setting. "I've been trying to put this thing back together for years," he tells her. "My dad didn't leave me any instructions. I didn't think that you--" He fits the hilt back together and grips it with both of his hands. "I didn't imagine that I'd run into _anyone_ who would know how to do this, let alone have another one of the crystals."

He activates the lightsaber. Like hers, it glows mostly white, but his has a red tint instead of a pink one. Tyler looks at his blade like he might cry. He gently swings it back and forth, watching the light of the blade shift with the movement.

He deactivates it and just holds the hilt in the air for a moment. Then he looks up at her. "I guess this is why the force was telling me to trust you."

"Because I can build lightsabers?" she asks.

"Because you have one of the crystals like mine," Tyler replies and smiles at her. 

Shelby finds herself smiling back. "You know, I felt like I could trust you too," she admits. "I felt relaxed around you, even though we'd just met." And because she can't contain her curiosity any longer, she asks, "What did you mean about the crystals only resonating with certain people?"

Tyler pats the couch next to him, and she takes him up on his invitation. Once they're seated side by side, he opens his journal, and flips to an earlier page. On it is a sketch of ten crystals in two rows of five. "There are ten crystals like ours," Tyler tells her. "They are very old and very powerful. Long ago, around the time of the Great Sith War, they were scattered so that the Sith wouldn't get their hands on them."

The sketch on the page looks familiar, and suddenly, she remembers the vision she had of a room filled with crystals. The ten crystals she saw on the wall looked exactly like the drawing in Tyler's journal. They were even in the same color order. She gasps and touches her fingers to the sketch.

"You've heard of them before?" Tyler asks, noticing her reaction.

"I had a vision about them," she admits. 

"A vision?" 

"Back when I first found my crystal, I had a vision and these crystals were in it," she says. "They were together, arranged just like this, in the wall of some room in a gigantic building."

"Huh," Tyler says. He flips a page and points to some of the writing on it. "According to my dad, the last time all ten of these crystals were together was in the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant around four thousand years ago."

"Four thousand years ago?" She shakes her head. She doesn't know how to make sense of that, so focuses on something else and asks, "Why did the Sith want them if they only resonated with certain people?"

"Even if they couldn't use them in lightsabers, they found a way to harness their energy for their own purposes," he replies. "I think they wanted to use them to power a new type of energy weapon." Tyler sighs and turns to her. "Shelby, it's not just the old Sith who were interested in the crystals. Right now, the First Order is after them. If they get their hands on even one, they could destroy entire planets -- entire systems even. It'll be like the Empire all over again."

She shivers. She remembers hearing stories about the Death Star and even thirty years later, everyone knows about how Alderaan was turned into a cautionary tale.

"My dad thought that an ancient being, probably a Jedi, was tasked with protecting the crystals," Tyler continues. "He also thought that it was this being who hid them all over the galaxy to keep them safe from the Sith."

"What happened to your dad?" she asks, blurting out the question without thinking about it. She knows that she has no right to ask him such a question, especially when the answer might be traumatic for him, so she slams a hand over her mouth. "Sorry. You don't have to answer that."

"It's okay," Tyler says. He flips to a page of the journal that features a large, detailed sketch of some kind of skull. "My dad was an archeologist. He discovered what he thought was one of the crystals at a dig." Tyler puts the hand not holding open the journal over his hilt and rests it there. "He started researching the crystals, and caught the attention of a First Order general named Fury. Fury's after the crystals. He hunted down my dad and captured him. I don't know where he's being held or what Fury's done to him. I've been trying to find out. That's why I've been travelling. All I know is that he left me this journal and this lightsaber."

"And he took the lightsaber apart so the First Order wouldn't find it," she says, recalling his earlier words and fitting them into place with his story.

"Yeah," Tyler says. "About a year ago, the crystal started making noise, like it was resonating with me, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't put the lightsaber back together again." He looks up at her and adds, "Thanks for that."

"No worries," she says. 

He offers her a sheepish smile. "Not that I have any idea what to do with a lightsaber. I'm not a Jedi. Do you know how to use yours?"

She shakes her head. "Not really."

Tyler snorts, and jokes, "Then we're both great Jedi."

She huffs. "We would've been if we'd been born before the Empire. In the time of the Republic, the Jedi Order trained the force sensitives that they discovered."

"I never thought of it that way," Tyler says.

She pauses and asks, "Uh. Are you force sensitive?"

"I'm pretty sure I am," he replies, sounding a little awkward, like he, too, isn't used to talk talking about force sensitivity aloud. "I can sense things sometimes. I mean, I can sense you right now."

"You're the first force sensitive I've met," she says, excited, and then she realizes what it is he just said. "Wait. What do you mean you can sense me?"

"I can't explain it, but when I'm around you, I feel peaceful," he replies. "I think I can feel the force flowing through you."

"Oh," she says, surprised. That's not how she would describe her sensitivity even if she's felt something similar. She tends to think of her abilities as being able to sense emotions rather than sensing the force itself.

"I'd ask you if you're force sensitive, but you said you had a force vision," Tyler says. He seems pensive for a moment before he asks, "How did you find your crystal?"

She tells him about Cera III and about feeling like she was being called out into the desert for a reason. She also tells him about herself. She tells him about how when she was a child, she always dreamed of going into space and exploring. She tells him about how she's always loved ships, especially old ones, and about how she taught herself how they work.

She tells him about how she met Captain Karone. She tells him about how she's saving credits for her own ship so she can do what she's always wanted to and explore the galaxy on her own someday.

He listens to her like he's interested in her every word, and though she hasn't exactly felt lonely on the ship, she hasn't felt a sense of connection like she feels with Tyler in a very long time. She wonders if he feels it too.

She doesn't wonder long. When she finishes her story, he tells her, smiling, "I'm glad we met."

She looks into his eyes, and finds that they're filled with warmth for her. "I am too," she says.

*

Shelby's relieved when Tyler doesn't leave the ship on Tatooine. Instead, he stays on board, making an arrangement with her captain to get off at a destination that will take at least a month for them to arrive at, given all the stops they'll make along the way. 

They sit together in the maintenance corridor where they first met, him reading from a datapad as she completes routine maintenance of a plasma conduit, when Tyler admits, "I'm not sure what I should be doing, but leaving you feels wrong to me."

She knows what he means. She, too, is sure that the two of them are supposed to be doing something together, even though she also has no idea what that something is supposed to be.

"Did I ever tell you about a vision I had of other people with crystals like ours?" she asks.

When she turns to him, he looks surprised. "You had more than one force vision?"

"Is that bad?" she asks.

"No," he says quickly. "Just rare. My dad met someone who had a force vision once, but I've never heard of anyone but Jedi having more than one. How many have you had?"

She ducks her head, embarrassed. "Just two."

"That's still amazing though," he says. "Uh, they were good visions, right?"

"I think so," she says, and she tells him about the vision that took place in what looked like a cave -- the one with the reptilian being, the Chalactan named Kendall, and the Zabrak named Chase -- the one in which a human named Koda was awoken from what sounded like thousands of years of being frozen in carbonite. She tells him about their lightsaber hilts and about Koda's crystal, and she tells him about how, when the vision ended, she felt sure that they had crystals like theirs.

"So maybe we find them," Tyler suggests when she's finished. "Maybe that's what we need to do."

"How do we even go about doing that?" she asks.

Tyler shrugs. "No idea, but it's a place to start."

*

When Shelby isn't working, they decide to hang out in the maintenance corridors and teach themselves how to use their lightsabers. Shelby downloads lessons on basic sword work onto her datapad and finds them long metal pipes to practice with.

They're both dismal at sword fighting at first. Normally when Shelby is awful at something the first time she tries it, she finds that disheartening, but every time they miss a swing or accidentally rap each other's knuckles, Tyler laughs, making light of it. Shelby finds that she's enjoying herself -- enjoying the process of learning and of trial and error -- as the two of them fumble through their makeshift training.

After a few days, they swing around their actual lightsabers to get a feel for them, but it's only after two weeks of practice that they try touching their lightsabers together. They mock fight, slowly and carefully, learning from each other how to attack and defend.

They also take turns throwing tiny bits of scrap plastisteel at each other, trying to deflect them with their lightsabers. It takes time, but soon they're both able to hit most of the debris that fly their way. 

*

Three weeks after Tyler's return, they're sitting together in a maintenance corridor, out of breath and panting from a training session. One moment Tyler is telling Shelby that her defense has improved and the next moment Shelby is sitting in the cockpit a small one-person starfighter. 

The read-outs on the dashboard in front of her are dire: the ship's hyperdrive is not operational, the astro droid has been destroyed, and the navigation system is down. She sees hands reaching for the controls -- hands she knows aren't hers -- and realizes that she's seeing through someone else's eyes and that this must be another vision.

The hands bring up the read-out for the comm unit, and prepare the system to send out a distress transmission.

"This is Rubik 7," a voice says, and it sounds tired and fearful. "I've escaped the Order's ships, but it won't be long before General Fury tracks me down. My ship is damaged and I'm running out of power. I seem to be in the Hercuron system, a parsec from the Velo-Sa asteroid. Any assistance would be appreciated."

She watches the hands encode the message, and she recognizes the encryption type as one the Resistance uses. This person, whoever they are, must be a Resistance fighter pilot.

After the person sends their message off, they turn their head to look out their cockpit window into space. A brilliant but unfamiliar star field appears before her eyes, but the window also reflects an image of the person whose eyes she's seeing through. They're a young human that seems to be male. He's wearing a helmet that bears the logo of the Resistance's x-wing pilots, confirming her earlier assumption. Even through the visor on his helmet, she can see dark circles under his eyes. 

The man sighs, and looks back at his controls. He hits a sequence of buttons, and then a small compartment under the life-support system opens revealing a small green crystal inside. The crystals hums, just like the ones belonging to her and Tyler. The man reaches for the crystal but the moment his fingers touch it, she's back in the maintenance corridor, sitting on the floor with Tyler.

Tyler's eyes are wide when she glances over at him, and he looks even more out of breath than he did before. "What was that?" he asks.

"A force vision," she replies, feeling equally shaken and uneasy. "You saw it too?"

"Yeah," he says. "Whoever that was, he has a crystal like ours and he needs our help."

"The Hercuron system, a parsec from the Velo-Sa asteroid," Shelby remembers.

"But how do we get there?" Tyler asks.

"We'll need a ship," she tells him.

*

Shelby goes to Captain Karone because her captain has been flying this transport for longer than Shelby has been alive, and because she is one of the most knowledgeable beings Shelby has ever met.

"You want a ship?" her captain asks, eyebrow raised.

"Yes," Shelby replies, keeping her head held high.

"Why?" 

Shelby hesitates, unsure of what she should say.

Her captain smirks, looking amused. "Is this related to your new friend and what you two have been doing in the bowels of my ship?"

Shelby freezes, her heartbeat picking up as she tries to process that sentence and think of what a suitable reply might sound like. Of course her captain would know what they were up to. She seems to know everything.

Her captain must notice her panic because she says, "I don't mind your activities, Shelby. I'm intrigued by them, but I'm anything but upset by them."

"Really?" Shelby asks in disbelief.

"Really," her captain says, turning away from her to look out the large window in her quarters. "You know, I was part of the Rebellion once."

Shelby had suspected as much, but she never expected to hear it said aloud. She takes a moment to consider these words -- to recognize them as the sign of trust they are. "We need to help someone from the Resistance," Shelby says. "They're trapped in the Hercuron system and being hunted by the First Order."

"And that's why you want a ship?" her captain asks.

"Yes," Shelby says. "Please. I'll work extra hard, take extra shifts -- anything."

"No, Shelby," her captain says, and Shelby's heart sinks, thinking her request has been refused. But when her captain turns back to look at her, she's smiling. "You don't have to do anything like that, not for something like this. We land on Kadix in a few hours. I have an old friend there who can get you a ship."

Shelby doesn't know what to say. "Thank you," she says, the words feeling inadequate.

Her captain makes a dismissive gesture. "It's the least I can do for you." Then she walks up to Shelby, places her hands on Shelby's shoulders, and looks her in the eye. "Just promise me you'll take care of yourself."

Shelby hears the goodbye in her captain's words and it hits her for the first time that she's going to be leaving her ship -- her home -- and that she doesn't know when she'll be back. She swallows around something heavy in her throat before she says, "I promise."

*

Her captain's contact turns out to be a being with black and green skin, the likes of which Shelby has never seen before. It lends them a small two-person shuttle.

"It's a smuggling shuttle," Shelby tells Tyler the second she lays eyes on it. "And very obvious one too."

The shuttle isn't very large. Besides the cockpit, it has two bunks attached to a wall, a small kitchen and a small 'fresher. Though because it's a smuggling shuttle, it also has about a hundred hidden compartments of various shapes and sizes.

"Then it's perfect," Tyler tells her. "Can you fly it?"

Shelby grins at him. "Of course."

*

They leave most of their belongings behind in Shelby's quarters.

Tyler leaves behind his father's journal and what appears to be his bag and almost all of its contents. Shelby leaves behind most of her things, but she takes her basic toolkit with her. She's glad she decided to bring it along when, shortly after liftoff, their shuttle's hyperdive hiccups. She's able to fix it in minutes, and then the two them are on their way to the Hercuron system. Luckily, it's not far: it's a six hour flight at light-speed. They hope that the pilot they saw in their vision will be alright until then.

Because of her shift, their training session, the vision and their preparations to leave, Shelby hasn't slept in almost a day. She's exhausted and suggests that they try to get some rest on their trip. She takes the top bunk. Despite it being cold and hard, and the nervous anticipation she's feeling, she manages to sleep for a few hours.

When she wakes, she hears Tyler shifting on the bunk below her and asks, quietly, "You awake?"

"I haven't been able to sleep," he whispers back.

She stares at the bulkhead in front of her for a long moment, and then asks him, "How did you get that lightsaber burn?"

She hears him sigh before he replies, "General Fury. He figured out I was my father's son. He made me wanted man so he could capture me like he did my father."

"Why does he want you?" she asks, alarmed.

"I don't know," Tyler says. "And honestly, I'm not sure I want to find out."

"The stormtroopers on Gratha were looking for you, weren't they?" she says, putting the pieces together.

"Yeah," he says. "For a while, it wasn't so bad. I think Fury was looking for the crystal more than he was looking for me. I got through their check points pretty easily."

"But he still found you?" she asks.

"He found me," he says. "After I left Gratha, the check points suddenly got a lot stricter. I figured out why when I got a hold of my own wanted poster. Unlike the old memo Fury had sent out before, this one had my picture on it and everything. And it was sent out beyond the First Order, probably to every bounty hunter in the galaxy. It said that Fury wanted me alive." She feels a rush of remembered anxiety and terror, and knows it's not her own. 

"I was on Rashon and I booked a trip on a freighter," Tyler continues. "Someone on the freighter's crew must've recognized me from the poster. Fury arrived as I was boarding and caught me by surprise. We fought and that's when he burned me. I managed to escape and lost him by running through the local market.

"I wasn't sure where to go, but then I saw that Captain Karone's ship was in the port," he continues. "So I turned around and headed back the way I came. Thankfully, they weren't looking for me in the port anymore, and when Captain Karone saw me, she let me onboard without any questions and without taking any payment. If she hadn't been there..." he trails off and Shelby tries not to focus on all the worst case scenarios her mind is providing for her.

"You got lucky," Shelby says.

"I got lucky," Tyler confirms.

"We might be heading straight towards Fury," she reminds him. "What do we do if he finds us?"

"We'll cross that bridge if we come to it," he replies. "And I'm hoping we never do."

*

When they drop out of light-speed, they immediately know that they've arrived too late.

They easily spot the small Resistance starfighter they're looking for, but it's in the process of being pulled into the hanger of a First Order cruiser. The cruiser is small for the First Order's fleet, but huge compared to the size of their shuttle.

"That's Fury's ship," Tyler tells Shelby from the co-pilot's seat, and despite their earlier conversation, he seems more angry than terrified. "This is bad. If he gets that crystal, we're all in danger."

Shelby curses. "They've probably already noticed us too."

"But we look like smugglers," Tyler says. "If we're lucky, they'll think we're scavengers here for the Resistance starfighter or that we're here for something else entirely. We need to keep our distance."

"That I am in total agreement with," she says, hitting their thrusters and increasing the distance between them and the cruiser. "Now what?"

"We need a plan," Tyler says.

"We're going to try mount a rescue attempt against a First Order cruiser, aren't we?" she asks, already knowing the answer.

"We sure are," he says, offering her a wary smile. "Any ideas?"

"Well, we're going to need to get on that ship before it jumps to light-speed," she says. "And we're carrying two of the crystals Fury wants. We're going to need to be careful or he's going to have three of them by the end of the day. Not to mention that he seems to want you for some reason."

"Good point," Tyler says. He rubs at his chin as he thinks. "First things first, how we get on that cruiser?"

Shelby considers their options. They don't have much in the way of supplies. All they have, really, is their shuttle and themselves. She frowns. "The only thing I can think of is getting them to tractor us in too."

Tyler sits up straighter and his face lights up as he says, "That's a brilliant idea."

She stares at him, baffled. "What are you talking about? That's a terrible idea."

"No, it isn't. Hear me out," he says, and there's a mischievous look in his eyes when he points out, "This is a _smuggler_ 's shuttle!"

She finally catches on to what he's suggesting. "You're saying we get towed in, and hide inside one of the shuttle's compartments so they don't find us."

He nods. "Exactly. I'm betting this shuttle has more compartments than the First Order knows to look for. Besides, it'll get us on board without a fight."

"And then what?" she asks, admitting to herself that while his idea is dangerous, it might just work. "How are we supposed to find the pilot and his crystal?"

"If we get to an access terminal on board Fury's cruiser, can you hack their system?" he asks.

She thinks about it. "It would take me awhile. It would be easier for me to get the information we need if I already had a way into their system."

"So maybe we should take out a stormtrooper or two and take their clearance cards," he suggests.

"At that point, we should just take their armor too," Shelby says. She's half-joking, but Tyler nods. 

"Great idea," he tells her. "Then we can wander the ship without being detected."

As their plan comes together, there's still something Shelby thinks they need to consider, so she asks, "How do we get them to tow us in in the first place?"

"Oh, that won't be hard," Tyler says, and grins. "I'm a wanted man, remember?"

*

As Tyler records a transmission for their plan, Shelby grabs her tools and rips apart one of the redundant data processers installed on the shuttle. She fits its parts together into a box-like device, fuses it to a compressor casing from a fire suppressor and attaches the thing she just made to the boarding ramp controls.

"What is that?" Tyler asks her when he's done with his recording.

"What does it look like?" she asks.

Tyler gets closer to it to examine it. His eyebrows furrow when he replies, "It looks like a bomb."

"That's what I was going for," she admits.

He quickly backs away from it. "You made a bomb?"

"Not really," she explains. "It's just some junk parts I fit together, but Fury might think it's a bomb. This way when he tows the shuttle in, he'll think we set this bomb as a trap. If he thinks we left this shuttle in space to spring a surprise attack on him, he might think there's no one on board. Maybe it'll keep him from searching for us."

Tyler turns to look at her, and it makes her face feel hot when he tells her, eyes are bright with sincerity, "You're a genius, Shelby."

*

Shelby chooses a compartment for them to hide in. 

Shuttles like the one they were given have some standard hidden compartments and many more custom ones. They were given this particular shuttle's blueprints and she uses them to find a well-hidden custom compartment that will fit two people. 

The one she finds is near the rear of the shuttle and equipped with a small device that masks life-signs. Once they test it out, she transfers the blueprints to a datapad before deleting them off the shuttle's systems. She also transfers most of the shuttle's controls to the datapad, and, once she installs the datapad into the wall of the compartment they've chosen, she locks down the main computer terminal and the cockpit controls.

Shelby and Tyler squeeze into the compartment and when they seal its door behind them, the only light they have to see by comes from the datapad. Shelby takes a deep breath, shares a look with Tyler, and transmits Tyler's recorded message.

Tyler's face appears on the datapad's screen as the transmission is sent. He's got a smug look on his face as he says, _Hey Fury. If you want me, you're going to come and get me._

The transmission ends, and Shelby uses the datapad to put up the shuttle's shields and start its thrusters. They get Fury's attention instantly. His cruiser pursues them. Shelby fires the shuttle's weapons, which bounce harmlessly off the cruiser's shields.

The cruiser fires on them. Their shield go down, and despite how closely they're already pressed together, Shelby ends up smushed against Tyler's side as their shuttle rocks. Tyler puts an arm around her to steady them both.

The cruiser fires on them twice more, disabling their propulsion and weapons systems.

"We're lucky he wants you alive," Shelby mutters.

"Tell me about it," Tyler says.

The cruiser finally locks on a tractor beam and begins pulling them in.

"Here we go," Tyler says.

Shelby tries not to hold her breath as their shuttle get tugged into the cruiser's hanger. They both hear and feel the thud of their shuttle hitting the hanger floor once it's inside. Nothing seems to happen afterwards, and as the minutes pass by in silence, Shelby feels increasing nervous.

She brings up an image of the hanger using the shuttle's external cameras, and she sees a general who must be Fury, one of his officers, and a squad of stormtroopers circle their shuttle. Two of the stormtroopers are carrying scanning devices.

They wait. Fury leaves the hanger and comes back multiple times and, each time he returns, he confers with his officer.

It feels like twenty minutes have passed when Fury, flanked by stormtroopers, forces open their boarding ramp and steps inside.

"Stop," they hear someone say.

"That's Fury's voice," Tyler whispers to her.

"What's that?" Fury demands.

"It appears to be some sort of detonator, sir," someone replies. She assumes it's one of the stormtroopers because their voice is modulated.

"Is it active?" Fury asks.

There's a beeping noise that sounds like some sort of scanner running a check before the stormtrooper replies, "No, sir. It appears to be a dud."

Fury howls with laughter. "Foolish, boy. Thinking this little trap of his could defeat me."

She hears Fury's footsteps retreat and his voice sounds further away when he calls out, "Search the ship!"

Shelby closes her eyes, thankful they've gotten this far, and hopes that the rest of their plan is pulled off just as smoothly.

Beside her, Tyler shifts. She wonders what he's doing but then he finds her hand with his own and folds their fingers together. "We'll get through this," he whispers and squeezes her hand. 

She squeezes back.

*

It takes what feels like an hour for a stormtrooper to report to Fury, "The initial report seems to be accurate, sir. There are no life-signs aboard."

Fury recalls his squad of stormtroopers from the hanger, leaving only two to finish combing through the shuttle. Shelby can't believe their luck.

Then their luck gets even better. She watches on the datapad as the two stormtroopers searching the shuttle stand next to the shuttle's bunks as they compare their notes on the secret compartments they've found.

"There's a hatch for a large compartment right under their feet," Shelby squeals quietly. "The compartment doesn't disguise life-signs, but it's one of the ones that jams comm signals."

"Can you open the hatch remotely?" Tyler asks.

She brings up the system controls on her datapad. "No, but we can activate it from the control pad that's just outside the 'fresher door."

"Okay," he says.

"What about their weapons?" Shelby asks.

"I'll handle that," Tyler replies. "Let's do this. On three, okay?" She nods. "One. Two. _Three_."

They open their compartment and step out onto the deck as silently as they can. Shelby moves to the control panel, easily by-passes the block she put on the system, and activates the compartment controls.

One of the stormtroopers notices them and begins to raise its blaster just as the hatch beneath its feet gives way. Both stormtroopers drop.

To Shelby's surprise, Tyler jumps down into the compartment after them. "Tyler!" she shouts worriedly, hearing the sounds of a scuffle. This was not what she expected when Tyler said he'd take care of their weapons. She rushes to the edge of the compartment and peers into it. 

The compartment is about eight feet deep. Tyler is standing on its floor and the two stormtroopers are lying at his feet. Tyler has one of the stormtrooper's blasters and is pointing it at them. The other blaster is slung over his shoulder. By the way that the stormtroopers are moving, she can tell that they're disoriented.

Tyler doesn't lower the blaster. "We're going to need your clothing," he tells them.

*

They lock the stormtroopers inside the compartment. The locking mechanism isn't very strong, and she knows they'll find a way out eventually, but she estimates that it will take them a few hours to figure out how. She hopes that'll be enough time for herself and Tyler to do what they came here for.

With the stormtroopers taken care of, they turn their attention to their stolen armor.

She takes the smaller of the suits. It's a little too large for her, but she hopes it won't be too noticeable. The basic blacks of the suits are easy to put on, but the armor is more complicated and she and Tyler end up helping each other fit the armor into place. When they both pass each other's visual inspections, they sling the blasters over their shoulders and shove their lightsabers into their boots. She ties back her hair before putting on her helmet.

They find the stormtroopers' clearance cards in their pockets, and Shelby hides hers in her gloved hand as they ready themselves to enter Fury's cruiser.

They exit the shuttle together and step out into the hanger. The hanger is nothing like the ones Shelby's used to and she finds it strange and disconcerting. It's huge and strangely empty for a hanger. It's also oddly clean looking. The floors, walls and ceiling show no sign of dirt and have been polished until they shine. 

Thankfully, no one pays them any attention as they make their way out of the hanger and into a well-lit hallway. They stop at the nearest data terminal and Shelby uses the clearance card to gain access to the ship's system. She brings up the cruiser's schematics.

"There are only forty people on board," she tells Tyler. "Fury, three officers, six navigational and maintenance staff and thirty stormtroopers." She's thankful they're on a relatively small cruiser instead of one of the First Order's star destroyers that have thousands of people on board. 

She brings up a map, locates the detention center and points at the screen. "It looks like there are two cells for prisoners. They're both in this hallway two floors down. Only this cell is occupied," she says and points at the one furthest down the hallway in question. 

"So that's where we go," Tyler says.

They both take a moment to study the map, trying to memorize as much of it as they can before Shelby shuts down the terminal. As they make to leave, an all too familiar voice calls out, "You two!"

They both freeze and then slowly turn to face General Fury.

"One of you report to the weapons bay. Give Wrench as much help as he needs developing the new weapons," Fury orders.

"I'll meet you at the detention center later," Tyler whispers, so quietly she can barely hear it, and she realizes that he figured out a way to disable the voice amplifier and modulator in his helmet. Then he walks off in the direction they just came from.

"You!" Fury says, pointing at her.

Shelby holds her breath.

"Get back to work!" Fury bellows.

As he storms off, she can feel her hands shake.

*

Shelby makes it down to the detention center without difficulty until she encounters two stormtroopers guarding the entrance to its hallway.

When they notice her, she says the first thing that comes to mind: "General Fury says he wants all available hands helping Wrench in the weapons bay." Through the modulator in her helmet, her voice sounds like every other stormtrooper.

"What about the prisoner?" one of the stormtroopers asks.

"I'm here to relieve you," Shelby says. She's expecting to be scrutinized for her ill-fitting uniform or, at the very least, questioned about her ability to do the job of two stormtroopers. What she isn't expecting is the two stormtroopers to _salute_ her and then leave their posts.

She doesn't waste time thinking too hard about it. She rushes to cell door at end of the hallway and tries her stolen clearance card in the locking mechanism. It doesn't work. She curses and opens up the panel underneath it. She knows she can blast through the door if she has to but that would alert Fury to their presence and she knows their best chance at survival is stealth.

She hears the sound of footsteps -- loud footfalls getting closer and closer like someone is running her way -- and readies her blaster.

A stormtrooper turns into the hallway and spots her, but then stops in its tracks and raises its hands in the air in a sign of surrender.

"It's me!" the stormtrooper says in Tyler's voice and Shelby lowers her blaster and sighs in relief.

"The good news is that I figured out where the crystal is," Tyler says, rushing to her side. "The bad news is that Fury has it on his person."

"Speaking of bad news," she tells him. "This clearance card won't open the cell door."

"Try mine," Tyler says, handing her his stolen card. She fits it into the locking panel. It doesn't unlock the door, but it does give her higher clearance access to the ship's mainframe, which she uses to momentarily cut the power to the locking mechanism on the prison doors.

The door lets out a hiss as the locking mechanism releases, and Shelby begins to slide the door aside. A second later, an alarm starts blaring. "Shoot. There must've been a secondary alarm system," she says, frustrated at herself for not checking.

"We've got to hurry," Tyler tells her, and then someone inside the prison cell is sliding the door open further and charging towards them. The next thing Shelby knows, Tyler is falling backwards onto his back on the hallway floor.

"Tyler!" she shouts, but her attention is on the man standing in the cell's doorway. He's the Resistance pilot they've been searching for, but he's holding what looks like a broken-off piece of metal piping in his hands -- he must've gotten it from inside the cell -- like he means to strike her next.

"We're here to rescue you!" she says, holding up her hands to convey that she means no harm. He takes a swing at her. She ducks, and she feels like she's on autopilot as she reaches into her boot, pulls out her lightsaber and activates it. She meets his next strike with her blade and it cuts cleaning through his pipe.

He drops what's left of his pipe to the ground, his hands fall to his sides and he stares at her, wide eyed. "You have a crystal," he says.

"We're here to rescue you," she repeats, deactivating her lightsaber. The Resistance pilot is still blinking at her in shock, so she turns to Tyler.

He's in the process of bringing himself to his feet, a hand over his side. "Ow," he says, standing. Before she can ask him if he's alright, he pulls off his helmet and says to the Resistance pilot, "I'm Tyler." He points at her. "And this is Shelby,"

Shelby pulls off her own helmet, thankful to be out of it and nods at the man.

"I'm..." he says, and then he shakes his head as if he's attempting to clear it. "My name's Riley."

"It's nice to meet you, Riley. We need to talk, but right now we need to get your crystal and get out of here," Tyler says and hands Riley his blaster.

Riley's eyes go even wider as he accepts the blaster. "How do know about my crystal?" he asks.

Tyler pulls his own lightsaber out of his boot and activates it.

"Wait," Riley says, nonplussed. "You both have crystals? In lightsabers? Are you... Jedi?"

Shelby re-activates her lightsaber and gives Riley an apologetic look. "Not really. We're just two people who are trying to save you."

"Fury has your crystal," Tyler tells him, leading them into another hallway and towards the hanger.

Shelby hears footsteps coming from the hallway they just left and, hearing the same thing, Tyler says, "We're about to have company."

Sure enough, a moment later, they're rushing up against the wall for cover as a squad of stormtroopers opens fire on them.

Riley immediately and expertly fires back with the blaster Tyler gave him, and Shelby discovers that she can deflect most of the blaster fire with her lightsaber. She's suddenly thankful for the weeks she and Tyler spent training in the maintenance corridors on her captain's ship, throwing tiny piece of plastisteel at each other. She glances over at Tyler and sees that he's deflecting the blasts as well.

Shelby spots a computer terminal a few feet away. "Cover me," she says as she makes a run for it. She activates it using Tyler's stolen clearance card and shuts the blast doors at the end of the hallway, cutting the stormtroopers off from firing at them.

"Now we run," she says. 

Together the three of them run towards the hanger. As they run through hallway after hallway without encountering anyone, Shelby knows their luck won't hold much longer. She hates that she's right when they turn a corner and run straight into Fury. He's blocking the corridor and flanked by another squad of stormtroopers.

They fall back into the hallway they just came from.

"Did you really think you could best me on my own ship, boy?" Fury calls out, mockingly. "I should thank you for your naiveté. From the looks of your lightsabers, it seems you've brought me two more crystals."

The sound of Fury's boots hitting the floor gets louder as he walks towards them, and Shelby's hands tighten on her lightsaber. They move further back down the hallway they retreated into.

Fury turns the corner, and stares them down. That he stands out in the open without any fear tells her how little he thinks of their abilities, and it scares her. Then Fury pulls a lightsaber hilt from his belt and activates it. His blade is red -- not a muted red like Tyler's, but a bright red that sends chills down her spine.

It's a Sith's blade.

Fury holds up a green crystal in his other hand, and then in a mocking tone, he repeats a twisted version of Tyler's earlier transmission: "If you want this, you're going to have to come and get it." He pockets the crystal and takes a step towards them. Then another. Then he breaks out into a run, charging towards them with his blade held high, ready to strike.

Tyler rushes forward and meets his blade with his own.

Shelby moves to assist him but Fury's stormtroopers file into the hallway, and she and Riley suddenly have their hands full.

She does her best to only aim for their weapons and for non-vital areas, trying to stop the stormtroopers without hurting them seriously. She barely knows what she's doing with her lightsaber, but she manages to slice three blasters in half. She's thankful for her stolen armor, as it keeps most of their blaster fire from actually harming her. She gets hit in shoulder though, between two armor pieces, but she grits her teeth against the pain and keeps moving.

Riley takes out more than one of the stormtroopers that attack her, and now it's even more obvious that he knows what he's doing with a blaster. With his help, the two of them somehow manage to take out the stormtroopers, and then they're finally are able to focus their attention on helping Tyler with Fury.

It's clear that Fury has more skill with a lightsaber than Tyler does, and more strength too, but she can feel Tyler's anger and the way it's fueling him -- giving him the strength to fight back. While she's glad his anger is helping him hold his own against Fury, it scares her. She's felt Tyler be upset before, but it didn't feel like this. This anger doesn't feel like Tyler at all -- it feels twisted and evil and _wrong_. 

"Where's my father?" Tyler shouts as his blade crashes into Fury's.

Fury laughs. "I'm not telling, boy."

Riley aims his blaster at Fury. Knowing she won't be able to get close to them, Shelby deactivates her lightsaber and puts her hilt back in her boot. She swings her own stolen blaster over her shoulder, and aims it at Fury as well. Riley glances over at her and she nods. She fires and hits Fury in the side. As Fury staggers backwards, Riley hits him in the knees, and then in the elbow and wrist. Fury drops his lightsaber and before it hits the ground, Tyler takes the opportunity they've opened for him to strike Fury across his chest.

Fury falls backwards onto the ground. He's wounded, badly, and Shelby knows he won't be getting up again easily. Still, Tyler rests his lightsaber breaths from Fury's throat.

"Get the crystal," Tyler says, panting and glaring down at Fury.

Riley rushes forward. He fumbles with the pocket of Fury's robes, but a moment later he steps back with his crystal in his hand.

Shelby grabs Fury's lightsaber and though she feels malevolence coming from it in waves, she deactivates it, and shoves it into her boot -- the one not containing her own hilt.

"We _really_ need to get out of here," she says. Now that they've rescued Riley and his crystal, she doesn't want to spend another second on this ship. 

Fury starts laughing. "You won't escape," he says, sneering up at Tyler. "You don't even have the courage to defeat me."

"We'll escape," Tyler says, sounding calmer than she can tell he feels. He shakes his head. "And you're right, I won't kill you, but that's what takes courage." He deactivates his lightsaber and Fury laughs harder.

The three of them run past Fury towards the hanger, only to be greeted by what has to be most of the remaining stormtroopers on the ship and an officer holding a large, oddly shaped blaster.

"Wrench!" Fury yells, still flat on his back behind them. "Fire!"

The officer -- Wrench, apparently -- fires his blaster. With a loud bang, its blast hits Shelby straight in the chest and sends her flying backwards. She lands, hard, on the ground near Fury. Disoriented, she hears the sound of more blaster fire, and the sound of Tyler's lightsaber activating. 

Again, she's grateful for the armor she's wearing for absorbing most of the blast, though she feels winded and aches all over. Her shoulder, where she was hit earlier, hurts more than anywhere else as she rolls over and brings herself to her feet.

She hears more loud bangs and looks up to see Wrench fire his weapon again and again. 

Next to her, Fury chuckles. "What do you hope to accomplish, little girl? You should surrender while you still have your life."

She does her best to ignore him, and takes a moment to process the fight going on before her. Tyler and Riley are still standing but they're barely dodging blaster fire as they try to avoid both Wrench's blasts and the fire from the stormtroopers.

"Fall back!" she yells, raising her blaster.

Riley fires his blaster at Wrench, and when Wrench ducks to avoid it, Riley and Tyler both run towards her. She provides them with as much cover fire as she can and as they back into another hallway, she can hear Fury's laughter following them. 

They run until they're at the blast doors Shelby closed earlier. She rushes to the nearest computer terminal and shuts the blast doors on the other side of the hallway. Then she locks both sets of blast doors down, tricking them into thinking the hull has been breached, to keep them from being opened.

Riley looks back and forth between the blast doors and exclaims, "We're trapped!"

"We're alive," Shelby tells him and then slumps again the wall and slowly slides down it to the floor. Once she's sitting, she tries to catch her breath.

Tyler kneels in front of her, looking more haggard than he did earlier. "You okay?" he asks her.

"I hurt," she tells him. "But I'll survive. You?"

"I have a few new lightsaber burns, and I got hit by blaster fire, but otherwise, I'm good," Tyler says. He offers her a smile, and she returns it, though she's so exhausted, she knows it probably looks strange.

"How about you, Riley?" Tyler asks.

"I've been better," he says, sitting down next to them. Now that Shelby has a chance to get a good look at him, she notices the tears in his clothing, the obvious blaster wound near his hip, and the dark circles under his eyes. She remembers his undereye circles from her vision, but up close, they look even worse.

Riley seems to notice her gaze. He turns his head to look back at her and then shifts his attention to Tyler. He frowns, takes a deep breath and says, "You two are risking your lives for me. You don't even know me and you're..." He pulls out his crystal and stares down at it. "Even if we don't make it out of here, I owe you both."

"We'll make it out of here," Tyler says. "I'm not sure how, but we will. Shelby, do you think there's another way to get to the hanger?"

"Maybe," she says. She stands, but she's unsteady as she gets to her feet. Both Tyler and Riley stand with her and help her over to the computer terminal. She brings up the ship's schematics again.

Riley seems to notice it the same time she does. "There's a maintenance tunnel," he says, pointing at a long tube-like structure that runs the length of the cruiser. "If we can get to it, we can get to the hanger."

"But how do we get to it?" Shelby asks. As she zooms in on their location on the map, a loud blast hits one of the blast doors -- the one closest to Fury. It shakes the floor under them.

"It's Wrench's blaster," Tyler says. "He must've turned up the power on it. We don't have much time."

"There," Riley says, pointing at the schematic. "If we can get into that room, and cut through the wall, we might be able to make it."

"I'll have to unlock this door," Shelby says, walking towards one of the five doorways in the hallway they were trapped in. She pushes Tyler's stolen clearance card into its control panel. The control panel blinks and suddenly shuts down, its power cut remotely. Shelby curses. "Fury's locked us out." 

As if that wasn't enough bad news, with a loud clang, blast doors crash down over all the doorways in the hallway, forcing Shelby to step back from the door she's in front of. "I think we're going to need a new plan," she says.

"Let me try," Riley offers, and she moves out of the way to give him access to the control panel. As Riley starts trying to reconnect its power, Shelby hears a hissing sound, and turns. There's a bluish light cutting through the blast door she closed first -- the one Wrench wasn't trying to blast through -- and a moment later, a smell she associated with melting metal hits her nose. 

"They're cutting through," she says, just as another set of blasts hits the other blast door.

Riley slams his fist on the control panel and curses, apparently having no luck either. Then he lifts his blaster. "This is probably a bad time to mention this, but this blaster's energy cell is almost depleted," he says.

"Take mine," Shelby says, handing her blaster off to him. 

Riley fiddles with it. "It's not much better, but it'll do."

She notices that the cut in the blast door is already two feet long and that the time between blasts hitting the other door is increasing. She knows it won't be long until they'll have company. She also knows they'll need weapons to defend themselves. 

She pulls Fury's lightsaber out of her boot. She stares at it, feeling its vileness, and resists the urge to throw it as far away from her as possible.

"Are you going to fight with that?" Riley asks her.

"No," she says. Getting an idea, she finds a latch on the hilt's side and opens it. Then she tugs at the base of the lightsaber. It makes her shoulder scream in pain but she pulls off its bottom and slides out its innards.

The basic design and structure is the same as hers and Tyler's but it's sleeker and looks to be made from parts designed for a lightsaber rather than scraps that have been fused together. In the center of its matrix is a red crystal.

She can feel the crystal calling to her -- begging her to touch it with her bare skin, to hear its voice. She ignores it and carefully, she uses her gloved hand to pry it from its setting and drop it to the ground. It calls to her again, louder and more demanding this time, and she lifts her foot and slams her heel down on it. Its darkness vanishes as it shatters and she exhales.

"What are you doing?" Tyler asks her.

"Riley needs a better weapon," she replies and holds out her hand towards Riley, palm up. "Can I see your crystal?"

He seems to clue it to what she's doing because he hands it over, and the only question he asks is, "Is this going to work?"

"There's only one way to find out," she replies. His crystal hums pleasantly in her hands as she fits it into the setting. Its sound calms her and allows her to concentrate as she bends the setting with her fingers to hold the green crystal securely in place. 

She checks on the blast doors as she puts the lightsaber back together. At one end of the hall, the cut in the blast door is larger and rounder now, and soon she knows it'll be large enough for two people to fit through. At the other end of the hall, the center of the blast door is bent, the thick metal puckering towards them. 

"I promise I'll build you a better lightsaber when we're safe," she tells Riley, handing him the completed hilt.

He takes it from her carefully, holding it up and testing its weight. Then he activates it. A white blade with a green tint appears and Riley stares at it in awe.

"This is mine?" he asks softly, not looking away from the blade.

"You could activate it," she points out.

"Thank you," he says and she hears the wonder he's feeling in his voice.

"I hate to interrupt, but I think I have a plan," Tyler says and they turn towards him. "It's going to be close, but it looks like they're going to get through that door--" He points to the one being cut through. "-- before they get to this one." He gestures with his thumb to the one Wrench is blasting.

"So let's focus on defeating the stormtroopers they send through the hole they make in the first door," Tyler continues. "If we can pick them off, we might be able to get through the hole before Fury makes it through the other side. And if my math is right, he doesn't have that many stormtroopers left. That gives us an advantage."

"Sounds good to me," Shelby says and the three of them head over to the blast door in question. Before their eyes, the round cut becomes a complete circle and the laser that was being used to make the cut is turned off.

She and Tyler activate their lightsabers and they stand with Riley, all of them with their lightsabers raised, ready to strike anything that comes through the door.

For a moment, nothing happens, and then they step back as something pushes the circular metal piece cut in the blast door towards them. It hits the ground with a loud thump, and then someone is rushing through the hole.

Shelby recognizes them almost too late. As Tyler makes to strike them, Shelby lifts her lightsaber and blocks his attack. At the same, she calls out, "Stop!" to Riley, haunting his own attack. 

Tyler and Riley freeze and so does the person who came through the hole.

The person is a Chalactan female wearing a purple cloak, and in her hand is a lightsaber, it's blade a purple-titled white. 

"Kendall," Shelby breathes.

Kendall quickly turns her full attention to Shelby and looks her over, her gaze pausing on her lightsaber. Then she looks Tyler and Riley over as well.

"Kendall?" Tyler asks. "As in the person from your vision?"

A man wearing beautiful dark blue robes steps through the hole behind Kendall, and Shelby recognizes him as well. "Koda," she says. She notices the color of his lightsaber -- a whitish blue -- and something clicks in her mind. "You used your lightsaber to cut through the blast door."

Koda blinks at her in confusion and then lowers his lightsaber.

"Friends?" he asks Kendall.

Kendall eyes all of them once more, frowns, and then deactivates her lightsaber. "You all have crystals and they're all in lightsabers," she says. She sounds perplexed and her eyebrows are furrowed in confusion. She points at Riley. "I'm pretty sure we're here to rescue you."

Riley huffs out a laugh and deactivates his blade. "These two beat you to it."

Shelby and Tyler deactivate their blades too, and so does Koda.

"We could use a rescue though," Tyler says. Another series of loud blasts his the other blast door. "It won't be long until Fury's through."

"Alright," Kendall says. "Let's get back to our ship. We can figure out what's going on later."

"Guys!" someone shouts from the other side of the hole they're standing in front of.

"Over here, Chase!" Kendall shouts back.

Chase steps through the hole, and as he does so, his black cloak shifts enough so Shelby can see the lightsaber on his hip.

"They lowered more blast doors. This passage is blocked unless we want to take the time to cut through them all."

Chase stops in his tracks as he notices her, Tyler and Riley. "I see we've made some new friends," he says. His gaze lingers on Riley when he smiles and adds, "Hello there, my name's Chase."

"Chase," Kendall sighs. "Now's not the time for--"

There's a loud bang as the blast door on the far side of the hallway is breached, and then louder bangs as Wrench's blaster makes the hole bigger.

Shelby turns on her heel and activates her lightsaber. She hears the sound of other lightsabers being activated, and glances around her. The six of them are standing together, lightsabers in their hands, their white blades all glowing different colors. Shelby feels something then -- something warm that she can't describe -- something that makes her feel like she's exactly where she's meant to be.

Wrench fires his blaster at them through the hole and they scatter, all rushing out of the way of his blast and closer to sides of the hallway.

As the first stormtrooper comes through the hole, Chase says, "I've got this," and charges. He cuts the blaster the stormtrooper is holding in half and then kicks the stormtrooper in the side. Koda is there in an instant, striking the stormtrooper in the chest, preventing it from following as Chase leaps through the hole. 

Chase raised a hand, palm forward towards Wrench and his blaster, and suddenly Wrench flies backwards as if pushed by an invisible force, his blaster firing wide.

Riley, Tyler and Koda follow Chase through the hole in the blast door, deflecting blaster fire along the way, and once they're on the other side, Shelby jumps through the hole with Kendall.

The second her feet his the ground, she finds herself in the middle of a battle. She stabs a stormtrooper in the shoulder only to have another one fire at her from another direction. Before she can deflect its blasts, Riley takes it out, spinning his lightsaber in his hands like he's been fighting with one his entire life.

Shelby turns, notices blaster fire heading towards Kendall, and quickly deflects it.

"Thanks," Kendall says, and the two of them end up standing back to back, deflecting blaster fire together. Shelby notices that Kendall is able to redirect the deflected fire to back towards the stormtroopers. While Shelby isn't able to do the same, she's still able to keep most of the blasts from hitting either of them.

Shelby's too busy with her own part of the fight to pay attention to much else, so it's only after she and Kendall manage to defeat the three stormtroopers around them that she notices that Koda has tackled Wrench. As she watches, Tyler defeats the stormtrooper he's battling and runs for Wrench's fallen blaster. He grabs it and points it at Wrench, deactivating his lightsaber with his other hand.

Wrench breaks free of Koda, stumbles away from him and raises his hands into the air. "I surrender!" he shouts. The surrounding stormtroopers that are still standing follow suit, taking their hands off their blasters and raising them as well.

Chase herds them all, including Wrench, into a corner by the blast door, while Tyler continues to point the blaster at them. Chase then stabs each of their blasters with his lightsaber, severing their power supplies and rendering them useless.

"We can leave?" Koda asks.

"Yes," Kendall says and then calls out, "Our ship is in the hanger." She gestures towards the group of stormtroopers Chase and Tyler are guarding. "Leave them. We need to go now." Kendall begins to run towards the hanger, and without a word to each other, they all follow her.

Riley easily takes out the only stormtrooper they encounter along the way, and when they reach the hanger, Shelby takes a moment to take in the sight before her. A small old-style blockade runner -- the kind the Rebellion used -- is taking up most of the hanger. Its shields, or at least parts of them, are up and they flicker as a team of stormtroopers fires at it.

Fury stands on a balcony two stories above, a stormtrooper at his side helping him stand, watching the scene below him unfold.

Riley, Koda and Chase rush towards the stormtroopers and begin to fight them as Tyler points Wrench's blaster upwards towards Fury.

Fury laughs, the sound echoing eerily in the hanger. "You might get away this time, but it's not over. You won't ever be safe from me, kid, and neither will your friends. And even if, somehow, you work up the courage to defeat me, Master Heckyl will find you and your fate will be far worse than anything I could come up with."

Kendall moves to stand beside Tyler. She places a hand on his shoulder and then tilts her head back to look at Fury. "You're the one who should be worried about Master Heckyl," she shouts back. "When he finds out you had six crystals on your ship and you let all of them fall through your fingers, he won't be pleased with you."

Then she turns her back on Fury and towards the blockade runner. She pulls something from her pocket and it's only as she's holding it up to her mouth and speaking into it that Shelby realizes that it's a comm. "Keeper, lower the shields and the ramp." Almost immediately, a boarding ramp begins to drop from the bottom of the ship.

The second Riley, Koda and Chase defeat the last stormtrooper, Kendall leads them all aboard. Shelby follows along with everyone else and she's at the base of the ramp when she realizes that Tyler is not with them. She turns back and finds that he hasn't moved. He's still where he was, the blaster pointed at Fury. 

"Where's my dad?" he shouts, like he hasn't noticed that they're finally leaving.

Fury smiles, the expression twisting his features. "You'll never find him. You'll never rescue him from the horrors I've been putting him through," he taunts and Shelby feels Tyler's anger spike. She also feels something else -- something that reminds her of the wrongness she felt coming from Tyler during his earlier fight with Fury. Without the fight to distract her, she can now tell that Tyler feels _exactly like Fury does_ , and instantly she knows that Fury is doing something to Tyler.

"Where is he?" Tyler shouts again and she feels the air around him fill with anger and bitterness and more of Fury's presence. She knows she needs to do something to stop it. 

Fury's smile widens. "He calls your name, you know. Sometimes when he screams, he--"

"Tyler!" Shelby shouts as loud as she can, and starts running towards him.

Tyler visibly startles, and he turns to look at her as she slides to a stop beside him. "Shelby?" he asks. He blinks at her like he had forgotten she was there.

"Fury's not going to tell you anything about your father! He's just messing with your head!" she yells.

He still seems dazed so she deactivates her lightsaber, puts her hands on his shoulders and shakes him, hard. "Fury can wait for another time. We need to go!"

He blinks at her some more, but then his eyes go wide and he gasps for air sharply like he been deprived of oxygen. He stumbles, dropping the blaster, and Shelby catches him and holds him until he finds his feet again. 

"Shelby?" he asks again, shaking in her arms. "What just happened?"

"I'm not sure but I think Fury was in your head," she tells him.

Above them, Fury laughs.

Shelby doesn't give him the attention he wants, and even though it makes her shoulder hurt, she supports Tyler as she gently pulls him towards the boarding ramp. Koda meets them halfway, throwing an arm around Tyler's shoulders and taking his weight, and between the two of them, they get Tyler inside the ship.

The moment the boarding ramp closes behind them with a soft thud, Shelby releases Tyler and sits down on the metal floor of the ship. She sees Koda lie Tyler down on what looks like a cot, next to a cot with Chase on it. She vaguely wonders when Chase got hurt, but as her exhaustion catches up to her, she can't seem to focus on anything. Her body aches and her shoulder feels like it's on fire.

Riley is at her side a moment later. He yells, "We got them. Go!"

She hears the rumble of an engine's ignition sequence and Riley calling her name, and then everything goes dark and she feels like she's falling.

*

When Shelby wakes, she's not sure where she is. It doesn't worry her as much as it should, and she thinks that has something to do with the way that wherever she is feels safe to her senses.

She knows she's lying on her back on what feels like a bed and that there's what looks like a rock ceiling above her, but little else. Her confusion dissipates when she turns her head and sees Tyler and Riley lying on what look like medical beds next to her. 

She remembers the rescue mission. She remembers being rescued from it. She remembers pulling Tyler away from Fury. She remembers collapsing.

She takes a deep breath.

Both of Tyler and Riley are hooked up to some kind of scanner and look to be sound asleep. Tyler is closer to her and Shelby can see white bandages on his neck and shoulder. The rest of his body disappears under a white blanket. His breathing is steady and he looks peaceful. 

He's also no longer dressed as a stormtrooper.

Shelby looks down at herself and finds that she isn't either. Like Tyler and Riley, she has a blanket draped over her. She moves to lift the blanket, and her shoulder aches. It's not nearly as bad as before but it still hurts.

She tries to ignore it and lifts the blanket anyway, discovering that she's wearing simple medical robes underneath. She plucks her robe from her skin and presses her chin to her chest to get a good look at herself. She notices two things at once. The first is that her shoulder is bandaged. The second is that her chest and stomach -- the areas that were she was hit by Wrench's blaster -- are a mess of deep, dark bruises.

She's not wearing anything under her robe and she wonders where her lightsaber went. She hasn't been apart from it in months, and it feels strange that it's not in arm's reach. 

She hears movement on her other side -- the one opposite to Tyler and Riley -- and turns her head to discover that Chase is also lying on a medical bed next to her. He groans and makes a disgruntled looking face as he pushes himself up onto his elbows and blinks open his eyes. Then he seems to notice her staring at him and grins. "Good morning," he says.

"Chase?" she asks.

"That's me," he replies.

He sits up, his blanket falling to his hips, where it settles in around the waistline of a black pair of pants. He's not wearing medical robes or a shirt, and she sees that his chest, like his face, is covered with the symmetrical lines that mark the differentiation of his two skin tones. 

His chest is also marked with scars. There's a thin one on his shoulder, and what has to be a scar from a lightsaber burn that starts under his rib cage and disappears under his pants by his hip. Except for some bruising, all the evidence of physical wounds she can she see on him are old.

"Are you hurt?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Not really," he says, shifting so his legs hang off the side of the bed.

"Then why are you in this infirmary?" she asks him.

"Overexertion," he says. "I'm not used to..." he trails off and wiggles the fingers on one of his hands like that's supposed to have a meaning to her.

"You're not used to what?" she asks.

He searches her face and then his grin loses some of its sharpness. "Oh," he says, as if he just realized something. "Remember when I pushed Wrench back using the force?"

She nods.

"Well, I'm not really used to using the force like that," he admits. "It took a lot of energy and by the time we got back to the ship, all I wanted to do was sleep."

As Shelby considers this, Chase asks her, "You're as new to this as I am, aren't you?"

"Probably newer," she replies. She hadn't gotten the sense that Chase was new at this -- not that she knew exactly what "this" was. She had assumed that he, Kendall and Koda knew exactly what they were doing.

"And still you charged straight onto Fury's ship," Chase says and his grin is sharp again. "I think I'm going to like you."

He hops off the bed, and his feet are bare on the stone floor as he steps towards her. He offers her his hand, raising it close to her own and easy for her to reach. "I'm Chase," he says. 

She'd forgotten that they'd never been properly introduced. She takes his hand and tells him, "My name is Shelby." After he lets go of her hand, she gestures to the beds on her other side. "That's Tyler, and that's Riley," she tells him. "How are they?"

"I just woke up myself," Chase admits. "But Kendall will know. I'll go get her. She probably wants to talk to you anyway."

He walks towards an opening in the stone wall, which seems to be functioning as a doorway. It looks strange and uneven, and Shelby realizes that she's in a cave. Suddenly, the rock ceiling and floor make a lot more sense, as does the fact that she can't hear the rumbling of any engines. She bets it's the same cave she saw in her vision of Koda's unfreezing.

Chase pauses in the doorway, looks back over his shoulder at her and says, "It's nice to meet you, Shelby." Before she can say anything in reply, he's gone.

*

A few minutes later, Kendall comes into the room with Chase, Koda and the reptilian being from her vision. Kendall stops in front of Shelby's bed and in her hands are three lightsabers -- Shelby's, Tyler's and the one she modified for Riley. Kendall doesn't say anything about them though. Instead, she asks Shelby, "How are you feeling?" 

"I hurt all over, but my shoulder hurts the most," Shelby says. "It's not as bad as it was though."

"You're healing from a serious blaster wound to your shoulder, and from cracked ribs and major bruising," Kendall informs her. "You're going to be sore for a while."

Shelby nods, less concerned about her own injuries in that moment as she is about her companions. "How are Riley and Tyler?" 

"Riley's the Resistance pilot, right?" Kendall asks.

"Yeah," Shelby says.

"Besides some minor cuts and bruises, he's been treated for two blaster wounds, one lightsaber burn, two broken ribs, dehydration and exhaustion. He needs some more fluids and rest, but he should be fine in a day or two," Kendall says.

"And Tyler?" Shelby asks.

"He's the worst off of all of you," Kendall tells her. "He has six lightsabers burns -- only two of which are serious. He also has three blaster wounds, and he's been treated for a severe case of mental strain."

"Mental strain?" Shelby asks. "Is that because of what Fury did to him?"

"Yes," Kendall says. Before Shelby starts worrying, she adds, "He'll be alright, but with the medications and pain killers in his system, he probably won't regain consciousness for another few days. He won't be back on his feet for another week at least."

Shelby closes her eyes, relieved. "I'm glad they'll be okay."

"Regarding the mental strain, how did you know that Fury was doing something to him?" Kendall asks.

"I could feel it," Shelby replies, looking up at her. "Tyler didn't feel like himself anymore. He felt like Fury."

"You could feel that?" Kendall asks.

"Of course," Shelby says. "He felt wrong."

Chase snorts. "I told you she was talented." He sits down on the edge of the bed he just vacated. Koda sits down next to him and smiles at her.

Her attention is pulled back to Kendall when she raises the three lightsabers she's holding. "Where did you get these?"

Shelby itches to reach for hers, but restrains herself. She points at it instead. "That one's mine," she says. "I built it."

"You built it?" Kendall asks, raising an eyebrow. "Did someone show you how?"

"No," Shelby says. "After I found my crystal, it was like it was telling me how to use it. I think it helped me construct the lightsaber."

"The crystal helped you," Kendall repeats, sounding doubtful.

Feeling defensive, Shelby adds, "I'm a mechanic. I had everything I needed but a power cell. After I bought one, I just _knew_ what to do. I can't really explain it. I put the whole thing together in a night."

"In a night?" Chase asks and then whistles appreciatively.

"Is that good?" Shelby asks.

"That's amazing," Chase replies. "It took me two months to figure out how to make mine even with Kendall's help."

Shelby feels her face heat at the compliment. She wants to ask Chase about his experience with his own lightsaber, but Kendall holds up Tyler's lightsaber and asks, "How about this one?"

"That's Tyler's," Shelby replies. "He had the parts and the crystal. I just put them together."

"This is an old 2GEE-645 model," Kendall says. "They were notoriously difficult to put together."

"Huh," Shelby says. She didn't know that.

"Where did he get the parts and the crystal?" Kendall asks.

Shelby hesitates. "I'm not sure that's my story to tell," she says.

Kendall seems displeased by her answer, her lips pressing flat into a line, but moves on to Riley's lightsaber. "I know you didn't make this one," she says. "It's a model the Sith use."

"I didn't make it," Shelby agrees. "I stole it from Fury."

Kendall almost drops the hilt. "You stole it?"

"From Fury?" Chase asks.

"Yeah," Shelby says. "Tyler and Riley helped. Together we knocked Fury down, and he dropped it. I picked it up before we ran."

"And what happened to the crystal that was originally inside it?" This question is asked by the reptilian being and Shelby startles, having forgotten that it was in the room with them.

"I shattered it, and put Riley's crystal into the hilt in its place," Shelby replies.

"Are you sure Fury's crystal was destroyed?" the reptilian being asks.

Shelby remembers the way the crystal called to her, spewing evil, and how she stopped being able to sense it when she crushed it under her boot. "Yes," she replies.

Kendall examines the hilt and sighs. "Well, this is definitely the most constructive use of a Sith lightsaber I've ever seen."

Kendall opens her mouth like she's going ask another question, so Shelby quickly asks, "Can I have my lightsaber back?"

Kendall doesn't answer, but she walks along the side of Shelby's bed and passes her hilt to her. The second it's back in Shelby's hands and she feels it's familiar hum, she feels better.

"You have more questions for me," Shelby says.

Kendall nods. "I do."

"Okay," Shelby says. "But I have questions for you too. Is that okay?" 

"Of course," Kendall agrees.

"Awesome," Shelby says and immediately points at the reptilian being. "Who's that?"

The being steps forward. "I'm known as Keeper," it says. "Long ago, I was tasked with hiding the crystals you all carry. Today, I find myself tasked with finding them before Heckyl does."

"Are you a Jedi?" Shelby asks.

Keeper shakes its head. "No, though I have been their ally my entire life."

"Keeper very old," Koda says, piping up for the first time.

Shelby looks over at him. He's still smiling, and he's kicking his bare feet into the air. He looks like he's her age, but she knows he's not. "Are you older than Keeper?" she asks him.

She can practically feel the way Chase, Kendall and Keeper collectively freeze at her question. Koda doesn't seem to notice though. "No," he replies. "Keeper much older."

"Why did you ask Koda that?" Chase asks and he suddenly sounds wary.

"Because you found him in carbonite," Shelby replies. When even Koda furrows his eyebrows at that, she says, "Oh. I didn't tell you about the vision."

"The vision," Kendall repeats and looks pensive. "When we met, Tyler said you saw me in a vision."

"Yeah, a few months ago, I had a vision of you -- all of you -- freeing Koda from carbonite," Shelby explains. "It wasn't very long, but I saw that you had crystals like mine and Tyler's, and I learned your names. Uh, except yours, Keeper."

Kendall rubs her chin as she seems to consider this. "So that's how you knew my name as well as Koda's name when we first met. I was going to ask you about that."

"That's how I knew to trust you," Shelby says, and then asks, "Who are you all, anyway?"

"My name is Kendall Morgan," Kendall says. "I'm a researcher and I found the purple crystal in an old Jedi holocron in the library on Risis." She gestures towards Keeper. "I met Keeper in my travels to discover more about the crystal. When I learned what Heckyl was trying to do, we built this base in order to locate the other nine crystals. We found Chase shortly after."

She wants to ask more about what Kendall is saying, but at the moment, she's more interested in the name "Heckyl". She'd heard it mentioned twice on Fury's cruiser and Keeper had mentioned it too. "Who's Heckyl?" she asks. 

It's Chase who answers. "A top ranking general in the First Order."

"Is he the one trying to use the crystals to make weapons?" Shelby asks, remembering what Tyler told her.

"Yes," Keeper answers, and Kendall looks at her like she wants to ask how she knew that. "And he must not be allowed to succeed."

"So you're trying to find the crystals and keep them safe," Shelby summarizes.

"We also use them," Kendall says. "We use their power to protect them, and also to protect others from the First Order."

"You're with the Resistance?" Shelby asks.

"Only loosely at the moment," Kendall replies. "Our hope is to eventually be able to lend them our support. Chase and I have only been training together for six months. We've been learning from Koda, mostly."

"I new at this too," Koda says. "Only just accepted for training when..." he expression darkens as he trails off and Shelby feels something _awful_ from him -- a jumble of negative emotions she doesn't know how to separate or name. A moment later, the feeling is gone like it was never there at all and Shelby remembers how to breath. She doesn't know how Koda ended up trapped in carbonite, but she knows now that whatever happened to him was anything but pleasant.

"I see," Shelby says carefully. "Tyler and I have been training together for only a few weeks."

"What about Riley?" Chase asks her.

"What about Riley?" 

Shelby hasn't heard that voice since before she woke up. It's rough with disuse and when she turns to look at Riley, he's trying to get up.

Chase is on his feet and across the room in seconds. "Easy," he says as he puts a hand on Riley's back to help him sit up. 

Riley still looks exhausted, but his undereye circles aren't nearly as bad as they were before. He looks up at Chase, and then over at Kendall, Keeper, Koda, Tyler and herself.

"Hey," she says.

His lips quirk upwards into a smile. "Hey," he says back. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she says, and she remembers Riley rushing towards her when she collapsed the second she got off Fury's ship. "You?"

"I will be," he replies. He turns his attention back to Chase, who is still supporting him. "What about me?" he asks again.

"Shelby said she trained with Tyler," Chase explains. "I wanted to know how she and Tyler knew about you."

"I want to know how _any_ of you knew about me," Riley says. "Did you intercept and de-code my transmission?"

"No," Shelby replies. "We didn't have to. Both Tyler and I had a vision and in it we saw you in your starfighter. We watched you make your transmission."

"We experienced the same vision," Kendall says. "Riley, we think you called out to us through the force."

Riley frowns. "The force?" he asks. "Really?"

"You all had visions?" Shelby asks.

"Yes," Kendall says. "While we suspected that others with crystals, if they were out there, may have also experienced the vision, we didn't expect anyone else to make a rescue attempt, especially against Fury."

"We were hoping to avoid Fury," Shelby admits.

"So you all heard me and then came after me," Riley says. He takes a deep breath. "I owe you all my life."

Chase makes a dismissive noise. "You owe us nothing."

"He's right," Shelby says. "We _wanted_ to come after you."

"Thank you," Riley says softly.

"Don't mention it," Chase says, and then asks, "So. Where did you get your crystal?"

Riley rubs a hand over his face, and it's only after a long pause that he replies, "I found it a few days ago while on a mission. I was on my way back to my base when Fury found me. I have no idea how he even knew to look for me."

When Riley lowers his hand, he looks like he's thinking hard about something. "I remember sending the transmission and hoping that someone would hear it. I also remember... I held the crystal afterwards and felt something."

"Like what?" Chase asks.

Riley looks up at Chase and his eyes are wide and bright when he replies, "I can't really explain it. I felt like I was connected to something -- something bigger than myself -- and that someone out there could hear me."

Riley's words make Shelby feel like her skin is on pins and needles -- they make her feel like something special is happening and that she's a part of it. Just like when they all stood together on Fury's ship, she knows that she's exactly where she's supposed to be. 

"Well, lucky for you, we did hear you," Chase says, and smiles at him.

Riley's lips twitch into a returning smile. But then he seems to think of something because he grimaces and says, "I never reported in. My commanding officer probably thinks the worst has happened to me."

"We'll help you make contact," Kendall promises.

Riley nods. "I'd appreciate that," he says. Then he yawns. It stretches his mouth wide, and when it's over, he grimaces. "Sorry. I'm really tired."

"Our guests should rest," Keeper says. "If we wish it, we can continue this conversation later."

Kendall agrees, though Shelby gets the impression that she still has many questions she wants answered.

Shelby watches Chase help Riley lie back down. As Riley settles his head on his pillow, Chase pulls Riley's blanket back up to his neck. It's a small, simple gesture, but a kind one, and it warms her to see it.

When she turns away from them, Koda is standing by her bedside. "It nice meet you," he says and offers her a little wave.

She waves back. "You too, Koda."

Koda grins at her and then follows Keeper and Chase from the room.

Kendall lingers. She still has Tyler's and Riley's lightsabers in her hands. Shelby watches her as she gives Riley his. After he takes it from her, he runs his hands over it reverently like he can't quite believe it's real, and Shelby can't wait to make him a new Sith-free hilt.

Kendall returns Tyler's lightsaber next. As she places it next to his pillow, she tells Shelby, "I want to know how you built yours."

"And I'm curious about how you and Chase built yours," Shelby says.

"We can compare notes," Kendall offers and she smiles softly. It's the first time Shelby's seen this particular expression on Kendall's face, and she decides that she likes it.

"I look forward to it," Shelby says.

*

The next time Shelby wakes, Kendall shows her to a 'fresher. Careful of her bandages, Shelby washes off the grime of the past few days. She changes into clothing Kendall leaves for her -- undergarments, black pants and boots, and a lavender shirt -- and she knows the clothing is Kendall's the second she lays her eyes on it. 

Once she's showered and dressed, her stomach grumbles. She ends up sitting with Koda in the kitchen and eating everything he puts in front of her. She hasn't eaten in days and she's _starving_. Koda seems to delight in getting her to try new foods and he eats even more than she does.

When they're finished, she asks Koda, "Has there been any change?"

He shakes his head. "Tyler still sleeping," he replies.

Shelby sighs. Even though Kendall told her that Tyler would be unconscious for a while, she keeps hoping he'll wake soon. The last time she spoke to Tyler, he'd just broken free of Fury's hold on him. It scares her how easily Fury was able to manipulate the way Tyler acted and behaved -- the way Tyler felt to her senses. Although Shelby hasn't sensed anything off about him since she woke in the infirmary, she wants to see Tyler awake -- she wants to feel him be alert and know, deep in her gut, that he's really okay.

"You care about him," Koda observes, breaking her from her thoughts.

"He's my best friend," she says, not knowing the words were true until they left her mouth. They may have only known each other a short time, but Tyler is the person she feels the closest to. 

She likes him. She likes his determination, and his firm belief that things will work out in the end. She likes the way he explains things, the way he smiles and the way they work together. And she likes the way he makes her feel -- like she's more important and more brilliant than she ever thought she could be.

Koda puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Tyler be okay soon," he promises. 

*

Shelby sits on the infirmary bed that was hers and watches Tyler sleep. She feels too riled up to sleep herself, but she's discovered that watching the rise and fall of Tyler's chest calms her.

Kendall lent her a datapad, and Shelby uses it to check her messages. She has one from Captain Karone. It reads: _In case you need it._ Attached is her ship's schedule for the next three months, including port names and arrival and departure times.

Shelby's fingers tighten on the datapad as she reads through it. It's not simply that she and Tyler need to go back for their things. Shelby reads something else in her captain's message. Implicitly, her captain is telling her something very kind and thoughtful: _you are always welcome on my ship_.

Shelby moves on to catching up on recent events through the news feeds, and she's been reading them for an hour when Chase pops his head through the infirmary's doorway and says, "So this is where you've been hiding."

He disappears from the doorway a moment later, but then reappears with Riley at his side.

"You mind if we train in here?" Chase asks. 

"Chase is trying to show me how he, Koda and Kendall practice deflecting things with a lightsaber," Riley adds, holding up his lightsaber hilt.

The infirmary has high ceilings and a large, open area in front of its beds, but she knows that there are many other rooms in their base that would be more suitable for training -- ones that don't currently have a patient in them.

Then it hits her what they must be doing and she asks them, "Are you trying to keep me company?"

"Maybe," Chase replies with a playful grin. "Or maybe I just want to train with Riley right this instant in this room that you happen to be in."

Shelby huffs out a surprised laugh. "I'm okay," she says, touched by their gesture. "You don't have to."

"Who said anything about _having_ to," Chase says, and he takes Riley over to the far corner of the room. "And nothing we do can hurt Tyler, in case you were worried."

Shelby watches as Chase takes out a small metal ball with multiple protrusions in it. He lifts it so that both she and Riley can see it. "This device is called a 'remote'. It's used for defensive training." He hits a switch on its side. 

The remote floats into the air and Chase takes a step back from it. A few seconds later, it shoots an orange beam of light at Chase. It looks like blaster fire, but Chase catches the beam with the hand and nothing happens. "It can't hurt you or damage anything, really, but--" He takes his lightsaber off his belt and activates it. The remote fires another beam and this time Chase intercepts it with his lightsaber. The orange beam bounces off of his lightsaber and hits the ceiling. "--it reacts to a lightsaber blade, making it good for this kind of training." 

Shelby immediately wants to take the remote apart to see how it works. It's a way more efficient and safer training method than the one she and Tyler devised and involves one hundred percent less plastisteel flying through the air. 

"Your turn," Chase says to Riley, deactivating his lightsaber and doing something to the remote to make it recognize Riley as his target.

Riley activates his lightsaber and the remote begins firing at him. Over the new few minutes, Riley is easily able to deflect all its blasts.

"That's really impressive. You blocked them all," Chase says after the remote seems to run through a cycle and stop its attacks. "Now try controlling where you deflect the blasts." He winks at Riley. "Try to get them to hit me" 

Riley shifts his grip on his lightsaber as Chase resets the remote and, this time, Shelby pays attention to where the blasts are going after Riley deflects them. The first set of blasts go in random directions. Riley adjusts the way he's responding to the blasts, but the next set end up bouncing even further away from Chase than the first. During the third set, however, Riley starts bouncing the blasts in Chase's direction and three of the blasts actually hit him.

"That was harder than I thought it would be," Riley says, lowering his lightsaber. "The angles involved weren't what I was expecting."

"You did great," Chase tells him. He looks over at Shelby and asks, "Do you want to give it a try?"

"I wouldn't mind," she says. She leaves the datapad on the bed, grabs her lightsaber and takes a moment to look over at Tyler before going over to join Chase and Riley.

Chase sets up the remote and then both he and Riley back up to give her space.

Shelby activates her lightsaber and she manages to deflect all but three of the first barrage of blasts. The second time around, remembering Riley's lesson, she tries to aim the ricochets. She starts getting a feel for it, but because she's focusing on the ricochets, she ends up missing more of the blasts. One of her deflected blasts hits Chase in the forehead though, which makes all three of them laugh.

When Chase shuts down the remote, Shelby asks to see it. She turns it in her hands, examining it from multiple angles.

"You look just like Kendall when she's about to take something apart," Chase comments. "You can borrow the remote, if you'd like."

"Thanks," Shelby says. "But there's something I'd like to do first."

*

Shelby finds Kendall sitting at a workbench in the central room in the base. It's the room from her vision -- the one with a circular arrangement of computers in its center. Kendall looks like she's busy so Shelby worries she's interrupting something important when she says, "I was wondering if you still wanted to compare notes."

But Kendall puts away whatever it was she was working on, gestures Shelby towards her and offers her a seat next to her on her workbench. She then takes out her lightsaber. She opens her hilt and explains each of its components to Shelby.

While the basic design is similar, the insides of Kendall's lightsaber look little like hers or Tyler's. Kendall answers all of Shelby's questions and Shelby learns that Kendall modeled her lightsaber -- as well as Chase's -- after lightsaber schematics she found at a market on Onyx. She also learns that Kendall had tried making lightsabers with little success before she found the schematics.

What Shelby finds the most interesting is how Kendall's lightsaber has a crystal setting that seems to amplify the way Kendall's crystal hums. When Shelby tells Kendall this, Kendall shows her how she created it.

Shelby takes out her lightsaber next, and delights in being able to explain how she built it to someone who can appreciate her work and understand her every word.

After Shelby puts her lightsaber back together, she asks Kendall, "Do you have any spare parts?"

"What kind of spare parts?" Kendall asks.

"The kind I can use to make Riley a new hilt," Shelby replies.

*

Shelby works on the new hilt in the infirmary sitting next to Tyler, though every so often she wanders off to borrow a tool from Kendall's workbench or to grab something from her scrap collection.

In Kendall's scrap collection, she finds a cylinder made of green-tinted Aquitarian glass and immediately knows it will make a decent case for the new lightsaber. She bases the general design of Riley's new hilt on her own lightsaber but she uses the crystal setting that Kendall taught her to make. 

It isn't long after that that she takes her newly completed hilt to Riley and asks him what he thinks. His eyes light up when he looks it over, and he tells her that he loves it. He hands her his current lightsaber and Shelby takes great pleasure in removing his crystal from Fury's hilt and inserting it into the new one. 

When Riley activates his new lightsaber for the first time, the whitish green blade is the same as it was before, bright and familiar to them both. 

Riley was thankful for the first hilt she handed to him, but she learns exactly how he feels about the new one when he pulls her into a one-armed hug, surprising her. With more excitement than she's ever heard from him, he exclaims, "Thank you so much, Shelby!" 

Afterwards, Shelby doesn't take her lightsaber to Fury's hilt, despite wanting to. Instead, she takes Fury's hilt apart and adds its component parts to Kendall's scrap collection, thinking it poetic justice if the parts eventually wind up aiding the Resistance.

*

Shelby wakes to someone calling her name. She groans, rubs the sleep from her eyes, and sits up in the bed in the room she was given by Kendall. Chase is standing just inside her room's door.

"Hey," he says. "Sorry to disturb you, but Tyler's awake."

She's out of bed and on her feet in seconds. She's still dressed in Kendall's borrowed clothing, and she braids her hair as she hurries with Chase from her room to the infirmary. It's only when she notices how cold the floor is that she realizes that she forgot to put on boots.

"When did he wake up?" she asks.

"Only a few minutes ago," Chase replies.

She hesitates by the infirmary entrance. She can hear Kendall's voice inside. "--and we built this base in this cave system afterwards," she's saying.

"That's pretty cool," Tyler says and hearing his voice again -- especially sounding so upbeat -- makes her feel like she's putting down a weight she didn't even know she was carrying. She's through the doorway in the next heartbeat.

Tyler immediately turns his attention towards her. He's sitting up in bed, and he looks well-rested.

"Tyler," she breathes.

"Shelby," he says and smiles at her brightly. 

She runs towards him, and he opens his arms to her. She takes him up on his invitation and wraps her arms around him, mindful of his injuries but still hugging him tight.

"Shelby," he says again, and hugs her back. 

She can't feel any evidence of Fury's influence in him -- he feels like himself and no one else -- and his alert, untainted presence sets her anxieties at ease.

When she pulls away, he searches her face and puts a hand on her shoulder -- the uninjured one -- as if he's confirming that she's whole. "Kendall told me you were hurt," he says.

She laughs softly and joyously, and replies, "Says the person who was hurt so badly they slept for three days." He laughs too, but he also continues to look at her like he's waiting for an answer so she tells him, "I'm okay, really."

He lets out a breath and squeezes her shoulder. "I'm glad. I was worried that Fury... that Fury got to you, too."

"Oh," she says, not having considered that. "No, I think he only wanted you."

Tyler grimaces and closes his eyes, and she can feel fear from him when he admits, "I'm scared. I'm scared of what he could do to me. Back on his ship, it was like he was in here controlling me." He lifts the hand not on Shelby's shoulder and uses it to point at his temple. "If you hadn't been there, I don't want to know what would've happened."

"The worst didn't happen," she reminds him. "You're here. You're you. You made it out of there."

"I know," he says, gratefully. "It's just..."

"You're worried it will happen again," Shelby guesses.

Tyler nods and looks from her to Kendall to Chase. "If he could do that to me, what could he do to any of you?" He sighs. "What has he already done to my father?"

She can tell that Kendall wants to ask about his father. She knows that such a line of questioning won't do anything to improve Tyler's spirits and so she's relieved when Kendall says, "Then we prepare ourselves for what Fury can do."

"How?" Tyler asks.

"Back in the days of the Republic, force sensitives were taught how to shield their minds," Kendall explains. "That's something we can learn again." It's the first time Shelby's heard Kendall refer to them all as force sensitives.

"I think learning to shield is a great idea," Shelby says. She puts her hand over the one Tyler has on her shoulder. "And we can figure it out together."

Tyler smiles at her. It's not as bright as the one he offered her before the conversations turned somber, but it's still warm. "Yeah," he says, "shielding would be good." Then he changes the subject by saying, "Kendall was just filling me in on what I missed. Have anything you want to add?"

She smiles back at him, and begins to tell him about everything that's happened since she woke up.

*

When Shelby decides to meet up with Captain Karone and her transport on Xybria, Kendall lends her a small shuttle for the trip. Shelby offers to pick up Tyler's belongings for him, and it makes her happy when Tyler decides to accompany her instead. "As long as you're okay with it, I want to go with you," he says.

When the shuttle is in light-speed, and Tyler turns to her in the cockpit and asks, "What do you want to do after we rendezvous with Captain Karone?"

She startles at that. "I thought we were going back to help Kendall and the others."

"I want to go back," he says. "I want to train, I want to figure out a way to defeat Fury, and I want to find my father. But you said it was your dream to have a ship and explore the galaxy. You never said you wanted to be part of anything like this."

She smiles at that -- at his worry for her well-being -- and gestures at the controls under her hands. "I have a ship, and between hunting for crystals, training, and fighting the First Order, I'm sure I'm going to get a greater chance to explore the galaxy than working maintenance on a transport," she says.

Later, she thinks to ask him, "What would you have done if I'd said that I didn't want to go back -- if I'd said that I want to do something else?"

"I would've done what I need to do," he replies softly, smiling at her. "And then I would've found you and asked you if you wanted company."

*

It takes them two days in light-speed to reach Xybria, and they meetup with Captain Karone and her ship in its port. Captain Karone greets Shelby warmly: she puts a hand around Shelby's shoulders, and ushers her and Tyler onto her ship.

The ship looks and feels like Shelby remembers. The hallways, the lighting, the sounds -- they bring with them a feeling of home. Shelby marvels at this as her captain leads them to Shelby's quarters where their things are stored.

As Shelby clears out her quarters, her captain tells her about some of the adventures Shelby's missed. She doesn't try to stop Shelby from leaving and she never once asks about what she and Tyler have been up to while they've been away. Though Shelby does tell her, "I lost the ship your friend lent us. Fury has it now."

Her captain doesn't seem upset. She asks, "Did you do what you needed to?"

"Yes," Shelby answers. "We did."

Her captain simply says, "I'm glad to hear that."

Before they depart, her captain pulls her into a hug and tells her, "If you ever need me, don't hesitate to contact me." 

Shelby hugs her back, and even though they've never hugged before, it feels comfortable. "Thank you," she says, feeling so very grateful for her captain's unwavering support of her. "Thank you for everything." 

*

After they leave Xybria's atmosphere and Shelby lays in their course, she rests her hand on the lever that activates the hyperdrive.

Next to her, Tyler grins and asks, "Ready?"

Shelby thinks of the lightsaber on her hip, of Tyler and his contentment to stay by her side, of the friends she's just met, and of the adventures that await her.

"Let's go," she says, grinning back at him, and pushes the ship into light-speed.

**Author's Note:**

> The amazing and talented [Christina Woods](http://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/) has made fanart for this fic! ♥ (I did not expect this and it makes me so _happy_!) Her art is absolutely wonderful, so please check it out [via this tag on her tumblr](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/tagged/Touch-the-Stars-with-Your-Fingertips) or via the following posts:  
> 
> 
> * [Incredibly thoughtful and detailed designs of all the lightsabers in this story](http://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/146095663048/shhh-i-havent-gone-to-sleep-yet-so-technically)  
> 
> * [Gorgeous sketches of Shelby finding her crystal, making her lightsaber, and sitting with Tyler on her couch while he shows her his father's journal](http://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/147095220922/more-sketches-from-touch-the-stars-with-your)  
> 
> * [Shelby, Riley and Tyler as they make their escape from Fury's ship](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/147828339243/i-think-were-going-to-need-a-new-plan-okay)  
> 
> * [Koda, Kendall and Chase ready to rescue a pilot and fight their way through Fury's ship to do it](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/149177149215/im-pretty-sure-were-here-to-rescue-you-okay)  
> 
> * [Character art of Shelby in her mechanic overalls and carrying her toolkit](http://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/146407639652/you-dont-have-to-tell-methough-im-really)  
> 
> * [Character art of Tyler wearing his backpack and bracelet, and looking for his dad](http://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/146754818445/its-strange-but-i-feel-like-i-can-trust-you)  
> 
> * [Character art of Riley in his Resistance flight suit](http://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/147448471839/even-if-we-dont-make-it-out-of-here-i-owe-you)  
> 
> * [Character art of Chase the flirt](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/148151314672/hello-there-my-names-chase-more-character)  
> 
> * [Character art of Kendall doing research](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/148498293419/well-this-is-definitely-the-most-constructive)  
> 
> * [Character art of Koda being so very Koda](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/148838573081/koda-he-says-my-name-koda-more-character)  
> 
> * [Character art of Fury being Sithy](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/149510919922/you-dont-even-have-the-courage-to-defeat-me)  
> 
> * [Character art of Keeper the... keeper](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/149840409430/long-ago-i-was-tasked-with-hiding-the-crystals1)  
> 
> * [Character art of Captain Karone ft. both her ranger colors](https://christinawoodsart.tumblr.com/post/150168594439/you-know-i-was-part-of-the-rebellion-once)  
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Falling Into Orbit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7673293) by [Sparky_Young_Upstart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Young_Upstart/pseuds/Sparky_Young_Upstart)




End file.
